While described as a comedy, it is a complex drama about the human condition, love and deceit. Edward and Lavinia Chamberlayne have planned a cocktail party in their London flat when Lavinia suddenly disappears without a word. The first act opens in the middle of the party with Edward trying to appear normal and at ease with those of their friends whom he has been unable to contact. These guests include Julia a middle aged outspoken, yet caring woman, Celia, a young nervous girl, a poet; Peter, a confident young man, trying to break into the film business, Alex, artistic, exotic in dress and manner; and a man who is a stranger to him. This unidentified guest lingers in the shadows during the party, eavesdropping, unobserved, but stays behind seeming to understand the awkward situation in Edward's life and promises to help him sort his life out.
The play opens abruptly, fast and furious, straight into the heart of a conversation, perhaps even an argument.
Alex: You've missed the point completely Julia, There were no tigers. That was the point
Julia: Then what were you doing, up in a tree; You and the Maharaja?
Alex: My dear Julia! It's perfectly hopeless. You haven't been listening.
Peter: You'll have to tell us all over again, Alex
Alex: I never tell the same story twice.
Within five lines of the play's beginning we are therefore confronted with misunderstanding. One of the many questions behind The Cocktail Party is how much we understand other people, why has Lavinia left Edward, does he really love her, does Celia care for Peter? And it is the unidentified guest at the party who later plays a key role in revealing something unknown about the other characters to themselves and each other. Later revealed as the philosopher/psychiatrist, Sir Henry Harcourt Reilly persists in "finding out / What you really are. What you really feel."
After the party, Julia returns to Edward's party with the excuse that "I must have left my glasses here, / And I simply can't see a thing without them.... / I'm afraid I don't remember the colour, / But I'd know them, because one lens is missing" .
The spectacles may indeed be a symbol for the play's themes of illusion and blindness, but for Julia they provide an excuse to see more, to be the voyeur on her friends` relationships, encounters and concerns. The Cocktail Party is laced with images of defective senses and perception, particularly of sight. Lavinia does return and Edward's first meeting with his wife concerns their conflicting images of each other. Their marriage perhaps is a facade, their life just drifting along together based on habit and familiarity.
Lavinia: I'm prepared to take you as you are.
Edward: As I was or as you think I am but what do you think I am?
Lavinia: Oh what you always were. As for me, I'm rather a different person. Whom you must get to know.....
Edward: So here we are again. Back in the trap.... I've often wondered why you married me.
Lavinia: Well, you really were rather attractive you know; And you kept on saying that you were in love with me - I seemed always on the verge of some wonderful experience and then it never happened. I wonder now how you could have thought you were in love with me.
West 10`s excellent young cast succeed in turning Eliot's mixture of free verse and pedantic prose, written 50 years ago, into living, very modern, often witty, dialogue. While in no way trying to make a comparison, in many a scene I could not help but be reminded of several popular American television soap operas and comedy series, such as Ally McBeal, Friends or Frasier. These too revolve around the precarious encounters and relationships, analysing and questioning very serious feelings and emotional issues, through the dramatic concept of comedy.
As Edward, Andrew Dawson from the very beginning is a mature, strong presence on stage. He carefully balances an external social confidence, while partially hiding the brittle and cracked feelings inside, revealed in odd moments of despair in his eyes or movement, unable to comprehend the motivation of his wife's behaviour. 
Elodie Harper, tall, poised and elegant in a black evening gown, as Lavinia, is cool, calculated and controlling with a harsh, acid tone to her voice; but like the others has a hidden personality, vulnerable and uncertain about what she really wants from Edward. The sensitive and delicate Celia, played by Alana Baily, is a lost soul and flutters like a butterfly around the party, dancing between the men, teasing, flirting in a subtle manner, then flying off, just as others come near.
As a typical low budget Fringe theatre production, it would seem churlish to criticise the rather lack-lustre set (the chairs seem to be cardboard boxes covered loosely in red fabric) and poor costumes. While Julia and Lavinia are dressed in 1950s cocktail dresses, Celia dons a handmade rather torn slip-dress, bare legs and slippers. Only Julia has a handbag in the first scene only. Edward wears a contemporary style check shirt and cream chino trousers. As a host of a party at this time he would have worn formal black tie and suit as would his male guests. There are no costume changes through the play, which makes for ludicrous dress sense in the doctor's practice. Credit is given in the programme to a costume designer and three costume assistants, who do not seem to possess even an iron to make the out-of-period clothes look clean and pressed neatly. The style, verse speaking and overall stage direction by Lara Feigel have been given such attention to detail, that it is disappointing an accurate historic setting and "look" was not given equal measure. Many a fringe company can often find sponsorship in kind from local antique or second hand shops, and retailers to lend suitable sofas, tables, lamps, props and costumes - in return for a mention in the programme. I make the point because this was just a permanent distraction within an otherwise superb production of a great classic.
An interesting footnote is that the play was given its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival in 1949, as a special commission, which immediately sparked off a debate about its underlying meaning, and divided audiences and critics.
"One of the finest dramatic achievements of our time", said the Telegraph"A finely acted piece of flapdoodle" remarked the News Chronicle.
This only gave the play the media attention it needed. The Coctktail Party became the play that everyone had to see. After Edinburgh the play transferred to New York as a major success, establishing Eliot as a major theatrical figure, rather than simply a renowned poet, for the Wasteland and other great work. The Director of the original production by way of trying to explain the play's complex and mannered style, wrote in the programme note,
"there is plenty of comedy, and plenty of the penetrating analysis of men and women that makes us recognise ourselves, or our friends, among the four characters whose lives are the subject of the plot".
T. S. Eliot himself remarked 50 years ago about his own play "What you find in it, depends on what you bring to it."
Lara Feigel and her committed, bright young cast should be congratulated on this timely and ambitious revival. As I said, very now, very Ally McBeal.
