Harold Pinter's THE BIRTHDAY PARTY to Play The Gaiety Theatre

Following on from the successful tours of Alan Ayckbourn's Absent Friends and Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot in 2015, London Classic Theatre Artistic Director Michael Cabot announces his new 2016 production of Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party. The company includes Jonathan Ashley (Goldberg), Gareth Bennett-Ryan (Stanley), Cheryl Kennedy (Meg), Ged McKenna (Petey), Declan Rodgers (McCann) and Imogen Wilde (Lulu). The production tours to 37 venues around the UK and Ireland this spring/summer.

Harold Pinter's play, THE BIRTHDAY PARTY will run from the 30th of May - 4th of June in the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin.

"There's a gentleman living here. He's got a birthday today, and he's forgotten all about it. So we're going to remind him. We're going to give him a party."

A shabby boarding house in a small English seaside town. An elderly couple take care of a solitary guest, who rarely ventures out. The arrival of two enigmatic strangers seems to offer a welcome distraction from their mundane existence. But when an impromptu, seemingly innocent birthday party abruptly turns into a deadly game of cat and mouse, there are horrifying repercussions.

By turns, cryptic thriller and macabre comedy, The Birthday Party was Harold Pinter's first major work and is among the most unusual and absorbing of his plays. London Classic Theatre presents the first significant touring revival of the twenty-first century, promising to bring this ground-breaking classic to fresh and exhilarating life.

Director Michael Cabot said about bringing the play to Ireland, "Having toured to Ireland with our previous productions of Old Times (2006), The Caretaker (2010) and Betrayal (2013), I think that Pinter's writing strikes a genuine chord with Irish audiences. They tune into the complexity of the language and the darkness of his humour. I've always felt that audiences in Ireland have a very strong grasp of what makes a play work, so Pinter, who was a master craftsman and highly skilled playwright, has plenty to offer. One of the pleasures of watching a Pinter play is seeing the audience being taken into an unusual world where nothing can be taken for granted or is as it first seems. It requires patience and curiosity but can be intensely rewarding. We have built up some very special relationships with venues all over Ireland in the last 15 years - we are invited back time after time and always made to feel very welcome. We are very excited to be making our debut at The Gaiety with The Birthday Party."

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