The Birthday Party

Academy Award winner William Friedkin directs a new production of Nobel laureate Harold Pinter’s most famous and enigmatic work. Two imposing strangers arrive at an English seaside boarding house – disrupting the monotony and disturbing the puzzled Stanley - a former pianist who is out of a job and maybe out of his mind. In celebration of Stanley’s birthday, a party is planned but menace arrives and mayhem ensues. Facts twist into half-truths and the night unravels into a mix of the characters' whimsical, eccentric, clownish and ultimately darkest desires. Like seeing through a broken lens or playing an instrument out of tune, this celebrated and darkly comic work mixes the familiar with the strange and the anticipated with the offbeat for an unconventional experience that is anything but expected and nothing but extraordinary.