| Theatre Reviews
A Reading of Celebration
By Grainne McLoughlin
After scoring a major hit in Dublin’s Gate Theatre, Celebration — a staged
reading of Harold Pinter’s Celebration — transferred to London’s Albery
Theatre.
And the short three-day run proved to be a star-studded affair with Michael
Gambon, Stephen Rea and Joanna Lumley taking part.
The play explores three couples, who are exemplars of 1990s greed, having
dinner in a fancy restaurant. Ruthless in their pursuit of individual pleasures
they all have a distinct disregard for others.
Gambon — who plays Lambert in the Pinter play — exudes his usual brilliance
on stage acting as a peace enforcer who can’t bring himself to say a kind
word to his rebellious wife.
But it was Stephen Rea who with his invasive presence and intensity stole
the show. Playing the waiter, Rea reminisces about his grandfather who knew
everyone there was to know from WB Yeats to the Beverley Sisters.
Celebration is a 50-minute piece staged in tribute to the award-winning
playwright and director Harold Pinter who has received the 2005 Nobel Prize
in Literature in Stockholm.
And it does well to remind us why he’s one of the greatest comic writers
of his time.
Over the coming weeks and months there will be a number of productions
staged in honour of the 75-year-old. London’s Gate Theatre is set to present
a retrospective of Pinter’s work — A Kind of Alaska, A Slight Ache and Precisely
— between February 8 and March 4.
Celebration is no longer playing in the Albery but for further information
on the Gate Theatre’s retrospective of Pinter’s work contact the box office
of 020 7229 0706 or boxoffice@gatetheatre.co.uk.
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