The Birthday Party

Mr Pinter, on the evidence of this work, possesses the most original, disturbing and arresting talent in theatrical London.

It combines the structure of a rep thriller with the guilt mechanisms of Kafka's The Trial ... Pinter's enduring, ultimately undefinable play, which left the critics floundering in 1958, has the power of all first-rate art to acknowledge the past and reflect the future while existing in the tangible present.

A darkly comic masterpiece . . . Laughs aren't presumed upon – they arise of their own accord, as does a mounting dread, achieved by Pinter's ingeniously disconcerting way with words.

A decade on from his death, Harold Pinter remains pretty much incomparable as a playwright . . . a brilliant play