Jose Sospedra Canovas

 

PARTY TIME

 

 

 

Author: Harold Pinter

Title: Party Time

Editorial: Faber and Faber

 

 

The play of Harold Pinter, ‘Party Time’ was represented for the frist time by Alameida Theatre Company in 31st October 1991 in Almeida Theatre in London. It was directed by Mark Thompson.

 

Dramatis personae

The play is made up by nine actors who are in a party in a house of one of them, Gavin.

Terry, he is a man who is fourty years old. He has two children with Dusty, a girl who is ovetwenty years. Another couple are Liz and Douglas who are married. Liz is a thirty girl who is friend of Charlotte. Melissa became widowed and Fred  tries to conquer her.  Melissa is a friend of Terry that goes to the party with her.

But there is something that keep our attention. Lacks one character and all the time we asked during all the time. We talk about Jimmy who I don’t know what meaning this character has, because he doesn’t appear until the end of the play and he makes a monologue very strange

There is a waiter too.

 

Plot

A group of people are in a room in the Gavin’s flat.  They are making a celebration, a party. They all have in common that they belong to the same club. All of them have differents conversations about differents things: they speak about the new club, about hte dead of the Charlotte’s husband, Melisa tells that all of her friends that belong to others club are dead.

It seems that they are in war for differents comments that they made throughout the play.

Finally all of them speaks in the same conversation and the party ends.

At the end Jimmy appears and make a monologue.

Space

The space is the same during all the play: the living room of the Gavin’s appartment. It’s a close space, rich and of high class.

There the conversations take places in differents places of the living room (on the sofa, in a corner...) but all of them in the same room. It is clear, it is supossed that is a party and they are all together. The ambient seems lively and people seems enjoy it.

 

Time

The time of the play is the present. It happens in one day, just in a night, morning or afternoon, we don’t know.  There is correspondence between the time of the play and the real time.

 

 

Literary and stylistic solutions

 

This play is written in prose.The language is colloquial, standar, because the characters belong to the half-high class. Some words belong to the old English like kestrel and some vulgarism, for example fucking, bitch, etc.

 

 

Personal opinion

Other play written by Harold Pinter, my dear Harold Pinter. There is just one thing that I like Harold Pinter. It is that his plays are very shorts, but althoug they are short, they are very confusing, they are not easy.

The play, for me, has no interest, because nothing happens, and it is bored to see how a group of people is talking about a club, and all the play happens in the same place.

In difference with other Harold’s plays, here I see a criticism againts the society.