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Arts feature

The last survivor of The Birthday Party’s 1958 première remembers the traumatic first night

17 February 2018

9:00 AM

17 February 2018

9:00 AM

‘Mad, wearying and inconsequential gabble,’ sighed the Financial Times in 1958. ‘One quails in slack-jawed dismay.’ Here’s the FT at the same play last month: ‘The best I have seen on-stage.’ How about the Evening Standard? Then: ‘Like trying to solve a crossword puzzle where every vertical clue is designed to put you off the horizontal.’

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