The Cocktail Party Review: Utterly Remarkable

T.S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party (dir. Hannah Savage) was a singular experience. On the one hand, the source material was confusing, bizarre, and at times (mainly in the first act) soul-crushingly boring. On the other hand, director Hannah Savage and the rest of the cast and crew clearly poured their heart and soul into this production, an effort so tremendous and well-executed that it easily won out over the play’s story, which was just not to my taste. I thus find myself in the very unique position of saying that The Cocktail Party is a bad play executed well, and you should go see it. 

While praise is certainly merited for the lighting, sound, and set design of The Cocktail Party, all of which helped bring life to the play’s world, what really stood out to me were the truly great performances. Every actor was in top form, totally embodying their characters and, even with my gripes with the narrative, keeping me thoroughly immersed. This, to me, makes Clara Curtis’ performance as Celia Coplestone even more excellent. Standing out among a group of actors clearly on their A-game, Curtis brings a serious pathos to her role that totally blew me away. Her interplay and chemistry with Dylan Swain’s Edward Chamberlayne is also a delight to watch, so much so that, by the play’s end, I found myself wishing they had shared more scenes. 

I suppose that, in the interest of people unsure of whether to buy a ticket, I should go a little more in-depth regarding my issues with the story. In case this genre of story works for you, I will keep the spoilers here to a minimum. As a brief overview, I’ll just say that the plot is effectively split into two halves: Act I is a satire of the British drawing room comedy focusing on a cocktail party gone wrong (an oversimplification in the interest of time), and Acts II and III are an extremely spiritual meditation on isolation and disillusionment. Here’s the problem. Act I is, narratively speaking, punitively dull, with long, drawn-out conversations about trite topics slowly but surely draining my enthusiasm for the initially promising and compelling mystery of the cocktail party’s Uninvited Guest (played to perfection by Ezequiel Vigo Fernandez) and the disappearance of Edward Chamberlayne’s wife Lavinia. 

These mysteries are both answered at the end of Act I and throughout Act II but the answers to them are, to put it bluntly, ridiculous. Without saying too much, there is a sort of Christian plot twist to the play that, when it became clear to me what was happening, forced me to suppress a disappointed groan. If this type of thing is to your liking (the Christian stuff, not my groaning), then I strongly encourage you to go see The Cocktail Party. 

Even if it doesn’t, however, I still think you should see it. It’s a testament to the extraordinary work of the creative team that I left The Cocktail Party not feeling as though I’d wasted two hours on a story I dislike, but that I’d seen a truly great bit of student theatre featuring actors old and new delivering stellar performances. I might even go see it again. Who knows? Maybe the Christian stuff will work for me this time. 

Photo by Ellen Rowlett