What Is The Play The Birthday Party About?

The Birthday Party is a play by Harold Pinter, a British-Jewish playwright, winner of the Noble Prize for Literature.  He has been an actor, writer and director, generally of his own work, but occasionally others such as David Mamet.  Pinter's style made Mamets seventy five minute master piece Oleanna into a two and a half hour epic!

The Birthday Party is a play about a lodging house, where the landlady Meg dotes on her husband Petey and their one single lodger, the former pianist with a mysterious past called Stanley.

When one day two gentlemen come to stay, Goldberg, whose name might be Nat or Simon, and McCann, an Irish man, they terrorise Stanley and take him away with them.

Goldberg and McCann are shadowy gangster like figures who appear to know Stanley from his past, a past that is shadowed in mystery.

The play is called a Comedy of Menace, it is both funny and builds a tension around the menacing behaviour of the two men towards Stanley.