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Product Description
Product Description
A restaurant. Two curved banquettes. It's a celebration. Violent, wildly funny, Harold Pinter's new play displays a vivid zest for life.
In The Room, Harold Pinter's first play, he reveals himself as already in full control of his unique ability to make dramatic poetry of the banalities of everyday speech and the precision with which it defines character.
Harold Pinter's latest play, Celebration, and his first play, The Room directed by the author himself, premièred as a double-bill at London's Almeida Theatre in March 2000.
About the Author
Harold Pinter was born in London in 1930. He lived with Antonia Fraser from 1975 and they married in 1980. In 1995 he won the David Cohen British Literature Prize, awarded for a lifetime's achievement in literature. In 1996 he was given the Laurence Olivier Award for a lifetime's achievement in theatre. In 2002 he was made a Companion of Honour for services to literature. In 2005 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and, in the same year, the Wilfred Owen Award for Poetry and the Franz Kafka Award (Prague). In 2006 he was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize and, in 2007, the highest French honour, the Légion d'honneur. He died in December 2008.
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First Sentence
Celebration was first presented by the Almeida Theatre Company at the Almeida Theatre, London, on 16 March 2000. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Celebration was first presented by the Almeida Theatre Company at the Almeida Theatre, London, on 16 March 2000. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
A 2000 play mixed with his first play from 1957
13 Oct 2005
Format:Paperback
This book, published in 2001 around the time of the playwright's 70th birthday and a bit of a retrospective, contains two plays by Harold Pinter. The first is "Celebration", first presented in 2000, and the second is Pinter's first play "The Room", dating from 1957.
The comedy "Celebration" comes as a bit of a change of pace after the very intense "political" plays Pinter wrote from 1985 to the turn of the millennium. Riotously funny, it is set in "the best restaurant in Europe" with the stage divided into two tables. At one, Lambert and his brother Matt dined with their wives, Julie and her sister Prue, celebrating the anniversary of Julie and Lambert. At the second table, Suki chats with his wife Russell. As the play progresses, the characters get progressively more drunk, make appalling revelations without realizing it, divulge their infidelities, and yet stay oddly content and glad-hearted. Among the tables roam Richard and Sonia, the owners, and a hilarious intrusive waiter. It has been a long time since I read a Pinter play that made me laugh out loud (unless it was the laugh of shock and outrage at revelations in his political works), and enjoyed "Celebration" immensely.
"The Room" was written when Pinter was still squarely in the genre of theatre of the absurd. Rose, a sixty-something housewife, muses about who's living in the basement flat of her building, talks incessantly to her taciturn husband, and encounters a young couple interested in the room to let. At the end of the play Riley, a "blind negro" enters and brings a surprising message to Rose, resulting in the play's shocking ending. While I found the ending compelling, most of the play is fairly tedious; the very length of the play is a mark of the young writer's immaturity, since mature Pinter is quite compressed. Still, worth checking out as the beginning of a very entertaining career.
The comedy "Celebration" comes as a bit of a change of pace after the very intense "political" plays Pinter wrote from 1985 to the turn of the millennium. Riotously funny, it is set in "the best restaurant in Europe" with the stage divided into two tables. At one, Lambert and his brother Matt dined with their wives, Julie and her sister Prue, celebrating the anniversary of Julie and Lambert. At the second table, Suki chats with his wife Russell. As the play progresses, the characters get progressively more drunk, make appalling revelations without realizing it, divulge their infidelities, and yet stay oddly content and glad-hearted. Among the tables roam Richard and Sonia, the owners, and a hilarious intrusive waiter. It has been a long time since I read a Pinter play that made me laugh out loud (unless it was the laugh of shock and outrage at revelations in his political works), and enjoyed "Celebration" immensely.
"The Room" was written when Pinter was still squarely in the genre of theatre of the absurd. Rose, a sixty-something housewife, muses about who's living in the basement flat of her building, talks incessantly to her taciturn husband, and encounters a young couple interested in the room to let. At the end of the play Riley, a "blind negro" enters and brings a surprising message to Rose, resulting in the play's shocking ending. While I found the ending compelling, most of the play is fairly tedious; the very length of the play is a mark of the young writer's immaturity, since mature Pinter is quite compressed. Still, worth checking out as the beginning of a very entertaining career.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
A Master of Words and Social Comentary
7 Aug 2001
Format:Paperback
Harlod Pinter's Celebration is a work of biting genuis. His darkly comic look on today's society makes the play a standout in a sea of banal work in the theatre world. No American Playwright today comes close to his skill level. If you want to read well crafted theatre, you need to read Celebration and his earlier work The Room.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
An Instant Classic!
2 Sep 2000
Format:Paperback
If you are a follower of Pinter, you will love this book because it contains both the first and latest Pinter's plays. Celebration is written this year (2000) while The Room was written way back in 1957. For the new Pinter's fan, this is also an ideal book to be introduced to the great playwright of our time. Like most of his plays, these two plays should be read slowly, paying close attention to their witty dialogues. This is definitely one of the best drama book to come out this year.
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