Celebration (play)

Last updated

Celebration is a play by British playwright Harold Pinter. It was first presented as a double-bill, with Pinter's first play The Room on Thursday 16 March 2000 at the Almeida Theatre in London. [1]

Contents

Synopsis

The plot revolves around three couples dining in the most expensive restaurant in town (an allusion to The Ivy restaurant in London). At one table are sat two brothers, Lambert and Matt, and two sisters, Prue and Julie. Lambert and Julie are married, as are Matt and Prue. They are celebrating Lambert and Julie's wedding anniversary. Seated at another table are Russell and Suki, who later join the other party of diners. The diners' conversations are intersected by the existential ponderings of Richard, the restaurateur (a character based on the London restaurateur Jeremy King), Sonia the maitresse d', and an unnamed Waiter. The dialogue begins as an apparently ordinary celebratory meal for the diners developing into a complex weaving of more sinister themes, including undercurrents of love/hate relationships and incest. The play ends with a mysterious (and 'incomplete') speech from the waiter, which hints at a possible way to escape the pain of everyday life.

Original cast

Lambert Keith Allen
Matt Andy de la Tour
Prue Lindsay Duncan
Julie Susan Wooldridge
Russell Steven Pacey
SukiLia Williams
RichardThomas Wheatley
Sonia Indira Varma
Waiter Danny Dyer
Waitress 1 Nina Raine
Waitress 2Katherine Tozer

Television adaptation

In 2006, director John Crowley adapted Celebration for More4. It was first shown on More4 on Monday 26 February 2007.

Original television cast

Lambert Michael Gambon
Matt James Bolam
Prue Julia McKenzie
Julie Penelope Wilton
Russell Colin Firth
Suki Janie Dee
Richard James Fox
The Waitress (Sonia) Sophie Okonedo
Waiter Stephen Rea

Notes

  1. "Celebration" at HaroldPinter.org: The Official Website of the International Playwright Harold Pinter

Related Research Articles

Restaurant Single establishment that prepares and serves food

A restaurant, or, more informally, an eatery, is a business that prepares and serves food and drinks to customers. Meals are generally served and eaten on the premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and food delivery services. Restaurants vary greatly in appearance and offerings, including a wide variety of cuisines and service models ranging from inexpensive fast food restaurants and cafeterias, to mid-priced family restaurants, to high-priced luxury establishments.

Harold Pinter English playwright (1930-2008)

Harold Pinter was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party (1957), The Homecoming (1964), and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1971), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Trial (1993), and Sleuth (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television, and film productions of his own and others' works.

Waiting staff

Waiting staff, waitstaff, waiters (male)/waitresses (female) or servers, are those who work at a restaurant or a bar and sometimes in private homes, attending to customers by supplying them with food and drink as requested. Waiting staff follow rules and guidelines determined by the manager. Waiting staff carry out many different tasks, such as taking orders, food-running, polishing dishes and silverware, helping bus tables and restocking working stations with needed supplies.

<i>The Dumb Waiter</i>

The Dumb Waiter is a one-act play by Harold Pinter written in 1957.

Jason Isaacs British actor

Jason Michael Isaacs is an English actor. Isaacs' most notable film roles include Michael D. Steele in Black Hawk Down (2001), Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter film series (2002–2011), Col. Tavington in The Patriot (2000), Capt. Hook in Peter Pan (2003), Criminal Michael Caffee in the Showtime crime drama series Brotherhood (2006–2008), Capt. Gabriel Lorca in Star Trek: Discovery (2017-2019), Marshal Georgy Zhukov in The Death of Stalin (2017), and Vasili in Hotel Mumbai (2018). His other film roles include Divorcing Jack (1998), The End of the Affair (1999), Sweet November (2001), The Tuxedo (2002), Nine Lives (2005), Friends with Money (2006), Good (2008), Green Zone (2010), Abduction (2011), A Cure for Wellness (2016), and Mass (2021).

Royal Central School of Speech and Drama

The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama was founded by Elsie Fogerty in 1906, as The Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art, to offer a new form of training in speech and drama for young actors and other students. It became a constituent college of the University of London in 2005 and is a member of Conservatoires UK and the Federation of Drama Schools.

<i>The Servant</i> (1963 film) 1963 British film

The Servant is a 1963 British drama film directed by Joseph Losey. It was written by Harold Pinter, who adapted Robin Maugham's 1948 novella. The Servant stars Dirk Bogarde, Sarah Miles, Wendy Craig and James Fox. It opened at London's Warner Theatre on 14 November 1963.

<i>Betrayal</i> (play)

Betrayal is a play written by Harold Pinter in 1978. Critically regarded as one of the English playwright's major dramatic works, it features his characteristically economical dialogue, characters' hidden emotions and veiled motivations, and their self-absorbed competitive one-upmanship, face-saving, dishonesty, and (self-)deceptions.

The Room is Harold Pinter's first play, written and first produced in 1957. Considered by critics the earliest example of Pinter's "comedy of menace", this play has strong similarities to Pinter's second play, The Birthday Party, including features considered hallmarks of Pinter's early work and of the so-called Pinteresque: dialogue that is comically familiar and yet disturbingly unfamiliar, simultaneously or alternatingly both mundane and frightening; subtle yet contradictory and ambiguous characterizations; a comic yet menacing mood characteristic of mid-twentieth-century English tragicomedy; a plot featuring reversals and surprises that can be both funny and emotionally moving; and an unconventional ending that leaves at least some questions unresolved.

Michael Billington (critic)

Michael Keith Billington OBE is a British author and arts critic. He writes for The Guardian, and was the paper's chief drama critic from 1971 to 2019. Billington is "Britain's longest-serving theatre critic" and the author of biographical and critical studies relating to British theatre and the arts. He is the authorised biographer of the playwright Harold Pinter (1930–2008).

Smith & Wollensky

Smith & Wollensky is the name of several high-end American steakhouses, with locations in New York, Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Houston, Miami Beach, Las Vegas, London, and most recently, Taipei. The first Smith and Wollensky steakhouse was founded in 1977 by Alan Stillman, best known for creating T.G.I. Friday's, and Ben Benson, in a distinctive building on 49th Street and 3rd Avenue in New York. Many of the restaurants have a wooden exterior with its trademark green and white colors. The individual Smith and Wollensky restaurants operate using slightly varied menus. In 1997, Ruth Reichl, then-restaurant reviewer for the New York Times, called Smith & Wollensky "A steakhouse to end all arguments.".

Night is a dramatic sketch by the English playwright Harold Pinter, presented as one of eight short dramatic works about marriage in the program Mixed Doubles: An Entertainment on Marriage at the Comedy Theatre, London, on 9 April 1969; directed by Alexander Doré, this production included Nigel Stock as the Man and Pinter's first wife, Vivien Merchant, as the Woman (54). It replaced another sketch performed previously in the program We Who Are About To... at the Hampstead Theatre Club on 6 February 1969; each of the original eight sketches about marriage also featured two characters.

Bibliography for Harold Pinter is a list of selected published primary works, productions, secondary sources, and other resources related to English playwright Harold Pinter (1930–2008), the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature, who was also a screenwriter, actor, director, poet, author, and political activist. It lists works by and works about him, and it serves as the Bibliography for the main article on Harold Pinter and for several articles relating to him and his works.

Harold Pinter and academia concerns academic recognition of and scholarship pertaining to Harold Pinter, CH, CBE (1930–2008), English playwright, screenwriter, actor, director, poet, author, political activist, and the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature, at the time of his death considered by many "the most influential and imitated dramatist of his generation."

Comedy of menace is the body of plays written by David Campton, Nigel Dennis, N. F. Simpson, and Harold Pinter. The term was coined by drama critic Irving Wardle, who borrowed it from the subtitle of Campton's play The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace, in reviewing Pinter's and Campton's plays in Encore in 1958.

Jamie Lloyd is a British director, best known for his work with his eponymous theatre company.

<i>24 Hour Restaurant Battle</i> American food reality television series

24 Hour Restaurant Battle is a Food Network reality based cooking television series hosted by Scott Conant that features two teams competing against each other for a shot at their own restaurant.

Precisely is a dramatic sketch by the English playwright Harold Pinter.