Last June a starry selection of thespians gathered at the National Theatre for a single evening to celebrate the work of Harold Pinter. On Sunday BBC Four screened a penny-plain recording of the event, Harold Pinter: A Celebration (still on iPlayer here) which was all the more effective for its visual austerity. Television is often so obsessed with a succession of images that words can sometimes lose their authority. Not here -- the 90-plus minutes of the programme are all about words, words, words. Words of love and words of protest, words abused and words cherished. Words about cricket, politics, betrayal, memory, love and death.

The actors sit on chairs in a long line, stepping forward to deliver their words. The lights dip between each piece and otherwise provide basic illumination; occasional items of furniture make an appearance. Many of the actors read from texts. The minimal stage pictures complement coverage by four cameras with occasional infelicities of framing and movement. None of this matters -- and yet this is more than radio on television, since the nuances of performance add immeasurably.

Ian Rickson marshalled and directed the actors on stage; the event was filmed for Arena by the series' stalwarts Jill Evans, Martin Rosenbaum, Rebecca Savage and Anthony Wall. It is produced and directed by Martin Rosenbaum and Anthony Wall, who is also Arena's series editor. (Incidentally, what happened to what I understood to be the BBC's iron-cast contractual rule that creatives can have only a single name-check in the credits?).

This is the running order, with a handful of annotations.

• Death (1997) with Stephen Rea: a wonderfully simple, powerful poem.

• Voices in the Tunnel (2001) with Henry Woolf: death again, and memory and the past.

• from Celebration (2000) with Jude Law, Henry Goodman, Susan Wooldridge, Andy de la Tour, Lindsay Duncan.

• from Mac (1966) with Douglas Hodge: the first of three sections from Pinter's reminiscences of a touring theatre company in Ireland in the early 1950s.

Poems to A
• Paris (1975) with Colin Firth
• I Know the Place (1975) with Penelope Wilton
• To Antonia (1987) with Kenneth Cranham - three luminous contemporary love poems.

• Apart from That (2006) with Jeremy Irons, Indira Varma: a conversation on mobile phones with the parties saying nothing and everything.

• from The Caretaker (1960) with David Bradley: very funny, which starts 'Them bastards down at the monastery...' All the more effective for being given without the book.

• from Mac (1966) with Douglas Hodge

• from Old Times (1970) with Alan Rickman, Lindsay Duncan, Gina McKee: a semi-staged three-way duel about Sicily.

• from The Homecoming (1965) with Kenneth Cranham.

• from The Lover (1962) with Jude Law, Indira Varma.

• Arthur Wellard (1980) with Samuel West: a cricket reminiscence with all the linguistic dexterity of Pinter's drama.

• Tess (2000) with Penelope Wilton: an unsettling monologue played by one of the great Pinter actresses.

• from The Birthday Party (1958) with Kenneth Cranham, Henry Goodman, Lloyd Hutchinson: still disturbing after all these years.

• from Mac (1966) with Douglas Hodge

• from No Man's Land (1974) with Andy de la Tour: directions to Bolsover Street.

Political Poems
• American Football (1991) with Michael Sheen.
• The Disappeared (1998) with Janie Dee.
• The Bombs (2003) with Roger Lloyd Pack.
• I Shall Tear off My Terrible Cap (1951) with Harry Burton.
• Cricket at Night (1995) with Jeremy Irons.
• After Lunch (2002) with Lindsay Duncan.
• Weather Forecast (2003) with David Bradley.
• Meeting (2002) with Gina McKee.

• from Betrayal (1978) with Janie Dee, Michael Sheen: perhaps the most substantial extract of the evening, from a wonderful play about love and language and what can be said and what cannot.

• from The Caretaker (1960) with Colin Firth: a really poignant performance.

Poems to A
• It Is Here (1990) with Jude Law.
• To My Wife (2004) with Lia Williams.
• Poem (to A) (2007) with Jeremy Irons - for me, this is among the most touching things that Pinter ever wrote.

The evening concludes (or almost) with students from LAMDA reading extracts from the Nobel Lecture. But then, rather wonderfully, Stephen Rea interrupts with a memory of childhood from Celebration (2000). 

Illuminations' production of Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize lecture Art, Truth and Politics recorded for More4 and the Nobel Committee in 2005 is available on DVD here.