Nobel laureate Harold Pinter was admitted to hospital earlier this week, specifically forbidden by doctors to travel to Stockholm to deliver his acceptance speech. Instead, the speech was videotaped in a London studio to be shown at the event. The cause of the hospitalization has not been revealed, but Pinter's bouts with cancer are a matter of public record.

Meanwhile, in New York, the Atlantic Theater Company debuted a double bill of Pinter one-acts, Celebration and The Room. Ben Brantley (NYT) says the first play pegs "the existential ache in an evening of fine dining and superficial chitchat," adding that "anyone unfamiliar with Mr. Pinter who wants to understand why he was awarded the Nobel Prize would do well to hurry down to the Atlantic." Over at Variety, Marilyn Stasio (yep, the NYTBR mystery lady) thinks "the unexpected thrill of the evening is how well The Room... holds up after almost half a century." And Kenneth Jones of Playbill doesn't have a review per se, but he does mention the Atlantic's "Play for the Price of a Movie" program, in which (if I'm reading this correctly) fifteen of the theater's seats will be available at just $10 a pop, for those of us who've been priced out of Manhattan's theater scene.