Theater: Celebration and the Room

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Atlantic Theater Company presents a double presentation of plays by Harold Pinter. One being his first play "'The Room"' and another the most recent "'Celebration"'. The second p[lay is set at a wedding anniversary party hosted in an ultra-trendy restaurant. There are three successful couples who are jockeying for the upper hand. The first play ''The Room'' on the other hand is set in a shabby one-room London flat. It is a story that descends into a nightmare world of insecurity and uncertainty.

The pairing of the Harold Pinter's plays gives a splendid opportunity to evidence the evolution of an important playwright. Pinter just won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature. This was an unexpected award for a dramatist to receive.

Pinter has had the gift from the beginning and was interested in language. As per his talent it is said that "He doesn't normally go in for naked aggression. He usually disguises it under honeyed words.'

The Room is Pinter?s 1957 mystery play. The plot is built around a woman who is waiting for the return of her husband from work. But she is visited by many mysterious strangers. Finally a mysterious black man comes to her door who claims to have a message for her. Through the play she waits in a small, grubby apartment. Rose, as her name is, is an early cocooner. She's rather happy with her flat's security and warmth. Her mantra for life is "You stand a chance." But she does not have a window as it suggests that a person might escape through it. She lives in a fools a paradise and communicates with people who are deaf, dumb and blind. Her husband, Bert, eats, sleeps and silently ignores her. The black that visits in the end seems to have a history with the lady and after that the suspense begins. The cast includes Kate Blumberg (Mrs. Sands), Mary Beth Peil (Rose), David Pittu (Mr. Sands) Earle Hyman (Riley), Peter Maloney (Mr. Kidd), Thomas Jay Ryan (Bert Hodd).

Celebration (1999) on the other hand is Pinter's most recent play. This is showcased in the second half of the Atlantic Theater's double bill. The setting is radically different here. In an elite restaurant there are two nouveau rich couples who are celebrating a wedding anniversary at one end while a banker and his wife are dining at the other. Their is nonstop table talk, many times at cross purposes and the conversation is regularly interrupted by a waiter addicted to extravagant name dropping. This is not the Pinter whose dark and heavy work has given the term Pinteresque to our cultural lexicon. The cast of Celebration includes Betsy Aidem (Julie) Kate Blumberg (Suki), Patrick Breen (Lambert), Brennan Brown (Russell), Phillip Goodwin (Richard), Carolyn Mc Cormick (Prue), David Pittu (Waiter),Thomas Jay Ryan (Matt), Christa Scott-Reed (Sonia)