Celebration (2007)

"People would describe me as a psychopath. Am I right?."

Summary:

A wedding anniversary in an ultra-trendy restaurant, with three successful couples jockeying for the upper hand:

Three working class couples celebrating a wedding anniversary at a trendy restaurant take turns at one-upping each other as well as toasting each others’ success in business. They’ve come a long way economically and their next step, by implication, would involve a corresponding social mobility. They show no sign of being able to make the cut; rather it is clear they possess neither the requisite social nor linguistic skills to maneuver their way through the British class system.

The couples’ waiter presents himself, intrusively, as a man of similar goals; visually as well as verbally hilarious, the waiter sidles and insinuates himself in his clients’ conversation. He affects a middle class background by citing his and ”his grandfather’s“ familiarity with great men of literature and culture. In fact, he need not bother with name dropping. These people recognize T.S. Eliot no better than he does or his grandfather either, the model he cites as a source of intellectual accomplishment.

These couples seem desperate to enjoy themselves, displaced as they are in a situation of their betters. Their pretense at comfort in the posh surrounding keeps them on edge and at each others mercy.

Michael Gambon and Stephen Rea will be joined by Colin Firth, Jim Broadbent, Penelope Wilton, Sophie Okonedo and James Bolam in a special film of Harold Pinter's play Celebration for Brit TV channel, More4.

Celebration was broadcasted 26 February 2007.

(TV Movie)

7 February 2007 :

The Stage

More4 will broadcast a Pinter double-header at the end of this month, featuring John Crowley’s film version of Celebration followed by Harry Burton’s master-class Working With Pinter.

James Bolam, Colin Firth, James Fox, Michael Gambon, Julia McKenzie, Sophie Okonedo, Stephen Rea and Penelope Wilton are among the stars that appear in the screen adaptation of Pinter’s acclaimed one-act play set in a exclusive West End restaurant. More4’s broadcast marks its television debut. It has been produced by Michael Colgan, the artistic director of Dublin’s Gate Theatre, and Alan Moloney of Parallel Films - the pair previously made Beckett on Film together.

The stage production of Celebration received its world premiere at the Almeida Theatre in 2002 as part of a double bill with The Room, and has since been performed worldwide.

Meanwhile Burton’s film Working with Pinter is an intimate close-up of the playwright at work with actors on scenes from several of his plays including extracts of No Man’s Land, Old Times and The Dumb Waiter, interspersed with a recently recorded revealing interview with the Nobel prize-winner and one of his oldest theatrical collaborators, Henry Woolf.

Colin Firth

Directed by:
John Crowley

Writing credits:
Harold Pinter

Full credits here

Country: Ireland

Language: English

Color: Color

Cast:

James Bolam	Matt
Janie Dee	Suki
Colin Firth	Russell
James Fox	Richard
Michael Gambon	Lambert
Julia McKenzie	Prue
Stephen Rea	Waiter
Penelope Wilton	Julie