A “surreal drama where nothing is certain” is how Harold Pinter’s classic The Birthday Party has been described.

Bingley Little Theatre is staging the play next week. It centres around Stanley, a lodger at Meg and Petey Boyles’s seedy boarding house in an English seaside town.

When two sinister strangers, Goldberg and McCann, arrive to stay and demand a celebration, what started out as a birthday party quickly turns into a nightmare.

Petey, Stanley, Meg and Lulu share a kind of happiness that revolves around singing, drinking and dancing. Meg dances around the shabby dining room. Lulu, a glossily-dressed teenager, claps and laughs. Yet, sitting motionless and stern in the middle is the birthday boy, Stanley Webber, who may or may not know the two bureaucratic visitors who have come to see him.

Director Paul Chewins says: “Two men come to take away another man, and do so. There you have it. The plot. But Pinter has always been more about the situation than the plot and the situations in this play resonate with us all – the absurdity of modern life, the platitudes, the non-listening, the insensitivity, the fear of the unknown, the hilarity of what people find important.

“Guessing what the whole thing is about is one of the great pleasures of The Birthday Party. It might be difficult to watch at times but it is impossible to stop thinking about.”

The cast is comprised of Peter Hall, Julian Freeman, Nikola Morrison, Gilly Rogers, Jonathan Tate and Tim Gatti.

  • The Birthday Party runs at Bingley Arts Centre from Monday to Saturday at 7.30pm. For tickets call (01274) 567983.