The Birthday Party
by Harold Pinter

Name: The Birthday Party
Brand: Harold Pinter
SKU: 9780573606083
Rating: 3.65 (16 reviews)

Broadway West End Off-West End

The Birthday Party Book Cover — The Birthday Party Cover

Highlights

Female

Male

120 mins 1950s Interior Set Period Costumes

Synopsis

Meg and Petey live in a small seaside boarding house with their boarder, a strange chap named Stanley.

Two strangers, a sleek man named Goldberg and his musclebound henchman McCann, arrive unexpectedly.

Meg naively accommodates them with a room, and decides to arrange a birthday party for Stanley.

At the party, Goldberg and McCann play cruel games with the boarder, breaking his glasses, making a buffoon of him and ultimately pushing him over the psychotic precipice.

Why would they ruin the birthday party?

Press Reviews

"The most interesting play to be seen on Broadway."
— The New York Times

"Behind the surface symbolism...in the silence between the characters and their words, Pinter opens the door to another world, cogent and familiar: the part we hide from ourselves."
— Denver Post

Characters

Character	Gender	Age	Description
Meg A woman in her sixties	female	—	A woman in her sixties
Stanley A man in his late thirties	male	—	A man in his late thirties
Lulu A girl in her twenties	female	—	A girl in her twenties
Goldberg A man in his fifties	male	—	A man in his fifties
Mccann A man of thirty	—	—	A man of thirty
Petey A man in his sixties	male	—	A man in his sixties