THE Cotswold Players are set to tackle Harold Pinter’s classic “comedy of menace” the Birthday Party, in Stroud, from Tuesday, November 22.

Written in 1957, the Birthday Party was Pinter’s first major work and is among the most unusual and absorbing of his plays.

It starts with an apparently innocent situation that becomes both threatening and absurd as Pinter’s characters behave in ways perceived as inexplicable by his audience and one another.

The dialogue is often strange and sometimes impenetrable but, to quote Pinter’s biographer, Michael Billington, “he understood that conversation rarely proceeds according to question-and-answer logic, but is often more in the nature of an interrupted private monologue”.

Stanley Webber, an erstwhile piano player, lives in a rundown boarding house, run by Meg and Petey Boles, in an English seaside town.

Two sinister strangers, Goldberg and McCann, who arrive supposedly on his birthday and appear to have come looking for him, turn Stanley’s apparently innocuous birthday party, organised by Meg, into a nightmare.

Lloyd Morgans is an experienced actor and director but this is his directorial début at the Playhouse. He is supported by a cast of talented actors in this classic play.

Tickets, priced at £12 are available online at cotswoldplayhouse.co.uk/tickets or by calling 0333 666 3366.