Celebration and the Room: Two Plays

Jack Kroll in Newsweek has called Harold Pinter the most fascinating, enigmatic and accomplished dramatist in the English language. Since his first full-length play, The Birthday Party (1958), and continuing with The Homecoming (1965), Pinter has trained a sharp eye on the strange dynamics of modern family life. In his newest play, Celebration, he continues to examine the darker places of relationships. Celebration is an acerbic portrait of a sated culture choking on its own material success. Startling, full of black humor and wicked satire, Celebration displays a vivid zest for life. Also included in this volume is Pinter’s classic play The Room. Both plays are invested with the elements that make Pinter’s work unique: the disturbingly familiar dialogue, subtle characterization, and abrupt mood and power shifts among characters, which can be by turns terrifying, moving, and wildly funny.