The Birthday Party critics

Question 1

idea that it is a mixture of genres

Answer 1

Esslin: Theatre of the Absurd

‘wildly extravagant tragic farces and farcical tragedies’

Question 2

idea that improbable things are happening

Answer 2

Esslin: Theatre of the Absurd

‘the laws of probability are suspended’

Question 3

idea of theatre as catharsis

Answer 3

Artaud

‘the theatre has been created to drain abscesses collectively’

Question 4

Theatre of cruelty language deterioration

Answer 4

Vork

Lang ‘reduced to inarticulate sounds, cries and gibbering screams’

Question 5

banality of evil

Answer 5

Hannah Arendt

‘terrifyingly normal’

Question 6

womb quote

Answer 6

Wardle

‘[Pinter] is a writer dogged by one image - the womb’

Question 7

jokes vs danger

Answer 7

Wardle

‘to joke about the situation while oiling a revolver’

Question 8

what Pinter says his plays are about

Answer 8

Pinter

‘the weasel under the cocktail cabinet’

Question 9

ideas of words/ what is unsaid

Answer 9

Hollis

‘he assembles words to remind us that we live in the space between words’

Question 10

idea of hidden theme of the play

Answer 10

Gussow

‘ a play of intrigue with an underlying motif of betrayal’

Question 11

comparison to well made play

Answer 11

Burkman
‘an audience unused to an unresolved mystery in its drama is naturally baffled and threatened by such withholding of information’