The Birthday Party - Harold Pinter

The Birthday Party

-        Harold Pinter

      Harold Pinter was a Nobel prize winning English playwright, screenplay writer, director and actor. He has directed and acted in radio, stage television and film productions. The Birthday Party is the second full length play by Pinter and also performed frequently. He was famous for “Comedy of Menace” in his plays. His use of pause and silence is very significant in this play.

        “The Birthday Party” has a setting of a single room. There are few characters and their background is not described by the writer. Pinter has used extreme noise and silence for menace effect. Characters are violating each other by weapon of words. In “Waiting for Godot” there was

“Nobody comes, nobody goes, its awful”

And in this play we can say that,

“Something happens, someone comes, and someone goes but who we don’t know.”

        The play contains theme of absurdity by language, silence and pause, focus on trivial things, game of memory and hidden identity of characters. There is a use of broad comedy in the play by the character of Meg and Stanley. The characters use to change their name and presents mystery. As we can read in the interrogation scene where Goldberg asks Stanley about his identity,

Goldberg: why have you changed your name?

Stanley: because I have forgotten the other one.

Goldberg: what is your name now?

Stanley: Joe Soap

        He another theme is mystery and ambiguity. All characters are mysterious regarding their identity but the most two mysterious characters are Stanley and Goldberg. As Goldberg said in the play that,

“All my life I have said the same, play up play up and play the game”

       

There is important dialogue by Petey in the play about the artist and society which he tells Stanley,

“Petey (broken) Stan, don’t let them tell you what to do.”