First published: 02 Jan 2009

In a mark of respect and remembrance for recently deceased playwright Harold Pinter, all Ambassador Theatre Group-owned theatres will dim their lights on Saturday night, 3 January.

Between 18:30 and 19:00, the theatres, which include the Comedy theatre, the Duke of York’s theatre, the Fortune theatre, the Phoenix theatre, the Piccadilly theatre, the Playhouse theatre, the Savoy theatre and the Trafalgar Studios, will pay homage to the Nobel Prize-winning writer who died on Christmas Eve.

This West End tribute follows a similar response from Broadway, which saw its theatres dim lights on 30 December.

Pinter’s dark, menacing theatrical work came to the fore in the 1960s, following the initial panning of The Birthday Party the previous decade. The success of The Caretaker in 1960 saw him go on to write pieces including The Homecoming, Betrayal, The Hothouse and The Dumb Waiter in a style so unique that the phrase Pinteresque was created.

The London tribute coincides with the final performance of Pinter’s No Man’s Land at the Duke of York’s. The tragicomedy, which stars Michael Gambon, David Walliams, David Bradley and Nick Dunning, tells of two aging writers who, after meeting on Hampstead Heath, return home for an evening of banter and power games, watched by two sinister henchmen.

MA