Birthday Party, The

Drama

Harold Pinter

Characters: 4 male, 2 female

Interior Set

In a small house at a coastal resort live a man, his mentally wayward wife and their boarder who has been with them for a year. He is a strange chap, unkempt and in flight from we know not what. Enter an even stranger sleek Jewish man and his muscle bound Irish henchman. The mentally immature wife accommodates them with a room and then decides that it is time for the boarder to have a birthday. At the party she arranges, the new guests play cruel games with the boarder break his glasses, make a buffoon of him, and push him over the psychotic precipice. The next morning he is reduced to a gibbering idiot and meekly leaves with them.

"Fascinating capacity to be menacing, ominous and evocative of some dark and threatening doom." N.Y. Post.

"The most interesting play to be seen on Broadway." N.Y. Times.