“I spoke to her in a way I had never spoken to anyone before. Sometimes it happens, doesn’t it? You’re speaking to someone and you suddenly find that you’re another person.”

Harold Pinter’s ‘Moonlight’ is a quick read play, which ended the writer’s 1978 hiatus from the dramatic form in 1993. It follows a family in which the patriarch, Andy, is at his deathbed reminiscing about his youth and infidelity. His wife, Bel, is at his side and reminisces about her own infidelity with the same woman that her husband was unfaithful with. Andy is bitter, erratic and mocks his wife. While Bel seems to be more logical and brushes his comments off. Bel tries to get their children (Jake and Fred) to visit their father before he dies, but they don’t seem to take this seriously and joke and talk about other things. Bridget, the younger daughter, seems to be alone most of the time—unless in a flashback—and is the most caring of the entire family. But at the same time it feels as if she’s the most distant of them all.

This is essentially a play about a family that is no longer that much of a family. Set between two rooms and a ‘third area’, Pinter does a great job of depicting estrangement. Andy calls for his children, but will they ever come? Or will they confuse ‘Belcher with Bellamy’ and set other plans instead?

Interesting play, and even though I appreciate Pinter “leaving the story to the reader’s imagination” as Sarah stated on Goodreads in October 2017, I still feel like I needed more. It was a bit too ambiguous for me, and left me rather confused at times. And apparently one of the family members is already dead, which completely went over my head.