Harold Pinter, The Birthday Party

Andrew Wyllie (University of the West of England)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kerry Myler (Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1958

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Play

Resources

The Birthday Party is composed of three acts, and is set in a seedy boarding house, run by Meg and Petey, a couple in their sixties. There is only one boarder, Stanley, a scruffy, depressed-looking man in his late thirties who has apparently been a professional pianist. There are three figures who arrive in the boarding house from the outside world: Lulu, a young woman who tries without success to get Stanley to go out with her; Goldberg, a powerful and threatening Jewish man in his fifties; and McCann, an Irishman in his thirties, taciturn and menacing. Goldberg and McCann have a distinct air of the bogus about them, as if they were parodying their respective Jewishness and Irishness. It becomes clear that they have come in …

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1825 words

Citation: Wyllie, Andrew. "The Birthday Party". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 February 2003 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1449, accessed 27 November 2024.]

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