In the following essay, Bogumil looks at the role and meaning of games in The Birthday Party.

In the following essay, Kaufman argues that the game of blindman's buff, central to The Birthday Party, provides an expressive structure for what Pinter sees as inherent human traits: a struggle for mastery and hostility.

In the following explication of The Birthday Party, Lesser compares Pinter's worldview to that of Kafka's.

In the following essay, Edelman explicates a one-line reference to the game of cricket in Pinter's The Birthday Party.

Most loyal theatregoers tried to dismiss [The Birthday Party (1958)], but it wouldn't go away. You could say that the world of the play was unreal, but it was insistently analogous with the real world. What was missing from the plot was a clear motive, and, in a country dominated for two hundred years by the novel, motive had become a dramatic convention too. By ignoring, or at least obscuring, motive. Pinter concentrated his audience's attention on behaviour. The result is an uncomfortable di...

In the following review, Campbell praises The Birthday Party for its effective humor and tone of menace. Campbell comments that The Birthday Party is “seen as one of the defining plays of post-war theatre.”

In the following review, Beaufort praises the mood of “macabre menace” Pinter evokes in a production of The Birthday Party, which he also directed.

In the following review, Hewes commends the San Francisco Actor's Workshop for maintaining a roster of quality offerings, and praises its production of The Birthday Party.