Sixty years after that disastrous London premiere, The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter, now recognised as a classic, is receiving a starry revival. Toby Jones, Zoë Wanamaker and Stephen Mangan will appear in a 2018 West End production at, appropriately enough, the Harold Pinter theatre (renamed for the Nobel prize-winning playwright after his death in 2008). “Doing The Birthday Party is particularly thrilling because, like any first major play, it has the intense DNA of a writer’s inner life; their yearnings, their obsessions, their longings,” said Rickson. “There’s something about The Birthday Party in particular that’s so raw and committed – it has this kind of anarchic, punk spirit.”Jones, who last year starred in a Radio 3 drama of The Birthday Party, will play Stanley, a lodger at a seaside boarding house run by Meg (Wanamaker). The Birthday Party opens for previews on 9 January at the Harold Pinter theatre, London, and runs until 14 April 2018.

Source: The Guardian September 12, 2017 10:30 UTC