T.S. Eliot

The Coctail Party


“Something deeper than in their faces and their actions” is hidden within the Cocktail Party (1949) by the Nobel prize-winner poet.


The play starts and ends with a party. In the first one, the wife has just abandoned the family home; in the second, she has just returned. Using elements from what appears at first glance to be boulevard comedy, the creator of The Waste Land is seeking a universal aspect to relationship gridlock. “Nobody realised that Euripides’ Alcestis was at the root of my story”, comments the writer. Sixty years later, a group of notable actors transfers these questions to the present day.