SOURCE: “The Dystopia of Harold Pinter,” in Renascence, Vol. 21, No. 1, Autumn, 1968, pp. 17-20.

In the following essay, Kunkel explores the grim alienation Pinter's characters represent.

Harold Pinter mounted the challenge to Broadway for two years in a row. The Homecoming (1965), written after The Birthday Party (1958) but produced on Broadway before, was the best play of the 1966-67 season, winning the Tony Award and the New York Drama Critics Prize. The Birthday Party, which opened two weeks before the first play closed, was one of the best plays of the 1967-68 season.

The Birthday Party is fully as obscure as The Homecoming, and a bit more mysterious, if less absurd. The most stimulating parlor game among theater buffs in the spring of '67 was called “What Does The Homecoming Mean?” Six months later, the meaning of The Birthday Party became another hip conversational diversion. The precise fixed meaning of...