Celebration & The Room

A restaurant. Two curved banquettes. It's a celebration. Violent, wildly funny, Harold Pinter's new play displays a vivid zest for life. In The Room, Harold Pinter's first play, he reveals himself as already in full control of his unique ability to make dramatic poetry of the banalities of everyday speech and the precision with which it defines character. Harold Pinter's latest play, Celebration, and his first play, The Room directed by the author himself, premièred as a double-bill at London's Almeida Theatre in March 2000.

Harold Pinter was born in London in 1930. He lived with Antonia Fraser from 1975 and they married in 1980. In 1995 he won the David Cohen British Literature Prize, awarded for a lifetime's achievement in literature. In 1996 he was given the Laurence Olivier Award for a lifetime's achievement in theatre. In 2002 he was made a Companion of Honour for services to literature. In 2005 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and, in the same year, the Wilfred Owen Award for Poetry and the Franz Kafka Award (Prague). In 2006 he was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize and, in 2007, the highest French honour, the Légion d'honneur. He died in December 2008.