Customer Reviews

The Cocktail Party

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This wonderful play is ultimately entertaining while remaining completely unafraid to challengethe audience. Eliot explores the inner motives and masks that people wear while keeping you smiling the whole while. Be careful though; while you may be delighted the whole while, Eliot is busy weaving a tale that truly gets right down into everyones personal hells. Truly a drama that only he could deliver. Highly recommended.

In a world of appearances, a new species of peace-makers has been invented. The priest of old has disappeared. The psychiatrist has replaced him. He is there to listen to secrets, to sort out situations and to propose solutions to human problems. The very few that are worth it can become the saints of today, going to foreign desolate countries and helping people out of their difficulties, fighting poverty and diseases, bringing the christian faith to pagan people, living in suffering and dire hardship. The others are helped to adapt to our society, to be successful in this society without feeling the remorse or the fear that come along with it. They just become adaptable, supple enough to fit in a deeply dishumanized society. The psychiatrist is the go-between for such people.

This play is surrealistic and yet perfectly descriptive of reality. It is full of a new type of poetry, his poetry of love and hate, of a new type of drama, his drama of conflict-solving. T. S. Eliot manages to shift from the most superficial bourgeois drama to the deepest and serenest tragedy turned comedy. The path of these people is tragic in a way, but it ends in beauty or at least in harmony.

Yet I think T.S. Eliot would have been better inspired if he had gotten away from this bourgeois aristocratic society that is nothing but vain cocktail parties and superfluous appearances. The great poet he is could have been a better playwright.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

I am personally not a fan of Eliot, due to the fact that I, most unfortunately, started off with "The Wasteland", which is, as I am sure anyone reading this review will know, is not exactly an easy read, especially at age 12. However, "The Cocktail Party" seems to grasp me still, days after I have finished reading it. It is such a witty, humorous comedy that mocks the modern ages, and pretty much everyone who seems to be a part of this insane, chaotic world (at least as I understood it). I recommend this for anyone looking a good book to do a book report on, or someone looking for the meaning of life and/or in need of serious 'ponder' over the universe in a philosophical, poetic, aesthetic way.

T.S. Eliot is best known for his modern absurdist poetry, which deftly painted landscapes and characters both grim and gorgeous. His attempts at drama seem much more of a mixed bag. While I greatly enjoyed "Murder in the Cathedral", I was not so amused with "The Cocktail Party".

Eliot delves right into the action in Act I, with a small party of guests conversing in Edward Chamberlayne's London flat. Their host is distracted, and after all of the guests leave, he confesses his problem to an unidentified guest, that his wife has just left him. The unidentified guest mysteriously assures him that his wife will return the next day, as indeed she does. They each wind up meeting with a psychological consultant, who turns out to be the unidentified guest from the party. Through his circular questioning and the insights of their friends, he is able to convince the pair to find the answers for their ailments.

"The Cocktail Party" has been reviewed as a tale about the search for the meaning in life. If that is the case, Eliot had few answers, although some interesting questions. This snapshot of 'modern' London life feels cold and one-dimensional on the page; the reader has no sympathy or feeling for any of the characters who are questioning the meaning of their existence. The first act is by far the strongest, with the second and third acts trailing weakly off into absurdity.

I am personally not a fan of Eliot, due to the fact that I, most unfortunately, started off with "The Wasteland", which is, as I am sure anyone reading this review will know, is not exactly an easy read, especially at age 12. However, "The Cocktail Party" seems to grasp me still, days after I have finished reading it. It is such a witty, humorous comedy that mocks the modern ages, and pretty much everyone who seems to be a part of this insane, chaotic world (at least as I understood it). I recommend this for anyone looking a good book to do a book report on, or someone looking for the meaning of life and/or in need of serious 'ponder' over the universe in a philosophical, poetic, aesthetic way.

I know of only one other drama that uses the particular storytelling techniques of THE COCKTAIL PARTY. It's the movie I HEART HUCKABEES.

In both, there are ordinary people leading more or less empty lives, and the people they turn to for advice. These advisers have mystical powers or divine connections, but the whole show makes fun not only of the ordinary characters, but of the advisers and how they work as well.

THE COCKTAIL PARTY is a more serious play, since Eliot believed in the Anglicanism his advisers dispense, and he even has a martyr as part of his comedy. But both shows use their unique heavenly personages very well and get a lot of laughs out of them. And of course we have to give Eliot credit for inventing this particular approach.

There have been divine advisers before, of course, in plays like THE PASSING OF THE THIRD FLOOR BACK or MR. PYM PASSES BY. But the way they drift in and out of being real, in and out of being comic, is special in PARTY and in HUCKABEES. It's really fun to watch one then read the other.

THE COCKTAIL PARTY is a very good play. As a matter of fact it is a real joy listening to it and following the text. Every time I do I discover some new meaning in this great masterpiece. I am very happy with it.
G. Martini

The piece may be considered a precursor to Edward Albee's works. The opening is the Chamberlaynes' flat. Julia occupies the center of the storytelling. Edward is the host. Julia describes herself as a tough old woman. Edward claims his wife Lavinia is tending an old aunt in the depths of Essex.

After most of the guests exit, Edward is left with the unidentified guest. It is learned that Lavinia has actually left Edward. Edward is told to resign himself to feeling ridiculous. Alex and Peter return. Peter is concerned about his friend, Celia. Alex doesn't want Edward to be alone.

Celia then contacts Edward. She understands that Lavinia has left him. Edward fails to watch the dinner on the stove that Alex cooks for him and it is ruined. Julia returns. Celia remains and announces her interest in Edward to him. Julia's call interrupts the discussion. Her spectacles were left in the kitchen.

The unidentified guest reappears. He tells Edward he will change his mind, but he is not free to change it. Celia and Peter come again. They say Lavinia telegraphed Julia. Lavinia arrives, knowing nothing about a telegram. Peter is going to California and Celia may be going away.

Julia enters and next Alex. Everyone then leaves to accomodate the couple, Edward and Lavinia. Lavinia says she forgot all about the party. Edward tells how he invented an aunt.

In another act Edward tells a doctor how he cannot live with and cannot live without his wife. He says the death of the spirit is terrifying. Lavinia arrives and claims that she merely wanted to talk about her husband, not to meet him in the doctor's office. The doctor says that they are both too ill to enter his sanatorium. He characterizes them as self-deceivers. Celia will enter the sanatorium.

Act Three centers again on the drawing room of the Chamberlaynes. It is two years later. Julia and Alex appear and there is talk of tigers. Peter enters, having left Los Angeles three days earlier. He is a screeen writer. It is learned that Celia has died in a gruesome manner. Peter is disturbed because he doesn't think anything he does is important if Celia is dead. The physician notes that Celia has paid the highest price in suffering. Every moment is a fresh beginning.

Although this play of 1950 was Eliot's first full-length comedy, he had made an earlier stab at the genre in the 1920s: "Sweeney Agonistes," a first-rate work that unfortunately remained unfinished and is now included in collections of Eliot's poetry. "Sweeney" was a jazzy, dark comedy with originality and verve; by comparison, "The Cocktail Party" is tepid indeed.

Even judged on its own merits, however, this play falls short. The first half is enjoyable enough: an unusually well-written English drawing-room comedy with serious overtones. The play begins to fall apart with the bizarre sessions of pseudo-psychotherapy in Act 2, and degenerates into overt Christian flag-waving by the final scene.

Yet the play is still well worth reading. It is more accessible that Eliot's earlier plays and was a surprise hit on Broadway when it first opened. It is still occasionally revived today; one production featured Nancy Walker in the plum role of Julia, a seemingly scatterbrained older woman. ("Salvation! The quicker picker-upper!")