In this excerpt, Disch favorably reviews a 1988 revival production of Pinter's play. In addition to affirming the power of the playwright's text, this production, in the critic's opinion, offers skilled direction and powerful performances

Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party is appearing through May 22 at the C.S.C. Theatre on East Thirteenth Street. I regret being so tardy in my recommendation, for Carey Perloff' s production is vivid and well marshaled. More than most plays, The Birthday Party depends on a director who can mold clear dramatic action from a text that is a puzzle-box of ambiguities. It was Pinter's specific inspiration to create a plot that is all event and atmosphere, where the warring tonalities of hard-boiled thriller and Beckettesque farce alternate and finally fuse. Any effort to account for the action on the basis of the characters' histories and motivations is wasted effort, nor is...