Staged Reading

WHAT: Staged reading - The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter
WHERE: FINNBRIT, Fredrikinkatu 20 A 9 (map)
WHEN: Friday, 25th March 2011, 7pm

Following the success of our last two staged readings, The Finn-Brit Players’ Harold Pinter Project continues with a staged reading of The Birthday Party.

One of the most famous flops in recent theatrical history at its first London performance in 1958, The Birthday Party is now revered as a classic popular drama with deep political resonance. The characters in the seaside boarding house are all people Harold Pinter had come across.

The repartee is hilarious and vicious in turn, the dialogue mundane, descriptive, reflective, witty, threatening: the play is described as brilliant, baffling and bizarre.

It reflects Pinter’s obsession with power politics and the capacity of the human spirit to resist total submission. As he said of Petey’s line towards the end of the play: ‘Stan, don’t let them tell you what to do’, “I’ve lived that line all my life”.

The cast includes Stewart Gray, Angie Hämäläinen, Mark Durrant, Zoë Chandler, Jonathan Hutchings and Daniel McMullen. The reading is directed by Joan Nordlund and stage-managed by Beth Morton.

FREE ENTRANCE
Wine and snacks will be served.