Two sets of diners in an expensive restaurant trade stories of affairs and casual insults, while the restaurant's staff look in on them, giving glimpses into their own pasts.
Pinter creates a war of words which barely masks what is really going on behind the scenes. But the waiter, played by Stephen Rea, whose far-fetched name-dropping is simultaneously laughable and sad – his grandfather was DH Lawrence's drinking partner and James Joyce's godmother – comes closest to basic self-knowledge.
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Celebration is as devastating as any of Pinter’s plays from the last half of the 20th century. Nobody says what they really mean and every exchange is a power struggle, more often than not motivated by sex. The genuine isolation of the weak characters – the waiter in Celebration – is ignored or exploited. But there are plenty of laughs. |
Pinter has occasionally and rightly complained that critics seldom credit him with any sense of comedy, and as if to disprove that misapprehension Celebration is certainly his funniest and also perhaps his most accessible script in many years. It is set in a chic London restaurant, at two separate tables sit a cross-section of recognisable Pinter types. |
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Meanwhile, the unctuous manager, his female assistant and a waiter with extraordinary false-memory fantasies start to assert themselves as something more than restaurant staff, and at the end of the evening it is the young waiter, left alone on stage to confront his own demons, who has not only the last words but also the most immediate claim to our ultimate attention.
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Starring
James Bolam, Janie Dee, Colin Firth, James Fox, Michael Gambon, Julia McKenzie, Sophie Okonedo, Stephen Rea, Penelope Wilton
Directed by
John Crowley
Written by
Harold Pinter
Producers
Michael Colgan and Alan Moloney A Parallel Film and Television Productions and Blue Angel Films Production for Channel 4.