The phrase "comedy of menace" often applied to Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party suggests that although they are funny, they are also frightening or menacing in a vague and undefined way. Even as they laugh, the audience are unsettled, ill at ease and uncomfortable. The Birthday Party is a play that ultimately leaves the reader or audience confused and without any real explanation for the unfolding events. This in turn causes the audience to be uncomfortable and ill at ease. The play is riddled with elements of the absurd and surreal in which the central character, Stanley Webber, is threatened by forces or people whose precise intentions neither he nor the audience can define. This paper will attempt to explore the reasons for this.
Communication in the play is one reason why the audience and Stan become confused in the play. Communication is conventionally used to communicate a message or meaning to another character. In The Birthday Party communication seems to be solely used as a means to avoid silence (Combrink, 1979). The characters are constantly conversing in order to take part in a structured situation that gives them a temporary role and identity in order to escape the unstructured terror of isolation. What takes place is then a continual evasion from concrete conversations and the characters seem to continually need to confirm their relationships with others through senseless banter. This makes their conversation comical but also makes the audience feel confused and uncomfortable, as they are unwilling to understand the situation.
The play does not have a lack of communication, only a lack of real and effective conversation. The dialogue in the play seems to register repetitions, hesitations and equivocations of colloquial speech, but never really sounds natural. This leaves the audience wondering what the precise intentions of the characters are. .
Goldberg speaks continuously in platitudes and clichés making him seem like a conservative, middle class family man.
Harold Pinter's plays have puzzled critics from their first showing to the most recent adaptations. ... The quote shares many connections to Pinter's treatment of character in the two plays. ... It is more than likely that Pinter deliberately made these characters this way. ... Clearly in the world of Pinter, people are rarely truly understood. ... In conclusion, Pinter's final remark consolidates what he has previously said. ...
The Caretaker, written by the British playwright Harold Pinter in the late 1950's and early 1960's disrupts the audiences perceptions of existence and their understandings of it. ... Pinter is therefore concerned with what exists as unknown and intangible to humanity. ... The traditional attitudes towards theatre and the conventions of realist drama are disrupted by Pinter. ... Pinter divorces and exposes society's codes, institutions and human relations. ... Pinter does not adhere to the accepted use of dramatic conventions. ...
The plays "The Homecoming," by Harold Pinter, and "Lieutenant of Inishmore," by Martin McDonagh, evoke a cathartic response in audiences through portraying the characters and their relationships, which facilitate the levels of the theatrical orgasm embellished in the comedic styles of the plays. ... Mairead displays an upfront authoritarian style as she demands and challenges those around her for what she wants and needs in order to reach her goal and justify who she is, on the other hand, Ruth evinces a manipulative authoritarian style as she uses cunning tactics and mind games on those aroun...
In 2007, Rick's wife, Kelly, was in premature labor with their second son Christian. Fortunately, Christian was born without any defects but Kelly was not so fortunate. She suffered a life threatening hemorrhage. Kelly needed thirteen units of blood in order to survive the hemorrhage. Two years late...
Radio Drama: The Golden Years to the Forgotten Years "None of the people one might expect to be sufficiently enthusiastic about the subject to research it and write about it... have shown much interest in it." This quote, of course, refers to Radio Drama as an art form and dramatic medium and despite the fact that it has been around longer than television and used to be the primary source of family entertainment, "For some extraordinary reason, radio drama has been almost entirely overlooked by many theatre critics and teachers." This essay will, in part, rectify this and endeavour to p...
