Within a Sky Full of Earth

MEG. Is that you, Petey?
[PAUSE]
Petey, is that you?
[PAUSE]
Petey?
PETEY. What?
MEG. Is that you?
PETEY. Yes, it's me.
MEG. What? [HER FACE APPEARS AT THE HATCH] Are you back?
PETEY. Yes.
MEG. I've got your cornflakes ready. [SHE DISAPPEARS AND REAPPEARS] Here's your cornflakes.
[HE RISES AND TAKES THE PLATE FROM HER. SITS AT THE TABLE, PROPS UP THE PAPER AND BEGINS TO EAT. MEG ENTERS BY THE KITCHEN DOOR]
Are they nice?
PETEY. Very nice.
MEG. I thought that they'b nice. [SHE SITS AT THE TABLE] You got your paper?
PETEY. Yes.
MEG. Is it good?
PETEY. Not bad.
MEG. What does it say?
PETEY. Nothing much.
MEG. You read me out some nice bits yesterday.
PETEY. Yes, well, I haven't finished this one yet.
MEG. Will you tell me when you come to something good?
PETEY. Yes.
HAROLD PINTER • THE BIRTHDAY PARTY • 1957

The Birthday Party is the first full-length play by Harold Pinter. Although it is now one of Pinter's best-known plays, The Birthday Party was a commercial and mostly critical failure when originally performed at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, in 1958. After the play closed, however, Harold Hobson's review rescued its critical reputation, and it went on to become one of the classics of the modern stage and one of the most-frequently produced of Pinter's plays.
Stanley Webber, a failed piano player, lives in a boarding house run by Meg and Petey. On a day claimed to be Stanley's birthday by Meg, the boarding house is visited by two men, Goldberg and McCann. They throw a birthday party for Stanley through which Goldberg and McCann torture him psychologically and what seemed an innocent birthday party turns into a nightmare.
From this highlight shown above - it's the beginning of Act 1 - you can feel the ambiance of the whole play and notice that someone that enters, causing a flush of apprehension and doubt, with the use of small pauses and later characterized by the visitors, will be crucial for the drama. On these short lines you can almost touch the tension coming up.
[FAST FORWARD IT HERE • Robert Shaw, Patrick Magee, Dandy Nichols and Moultriie Kelsall in William Friekin's 1968 film of Pinter's play • BROUGHT BY BLOOM TV]