Celebration was Harold Pinter’s final play, and though it is not considered his best, it is perhaps his funniest. Set in a swanky restaurant, the audience overlooks two tables: on one, banker Russell (Fergus Blair) and his ex-secretary wife Suki (Lucy Butterfield); on the other, a small party celebrating the wedding anniversary of Lambert (George Blacksell) and Julie (Laura Rowson). Celebration brilliantly skewers the crass clientele of supposedly upmarket establishments, exposes their shallowness, their hollowness, and ridicules the bullshittery spouted by them; and the satire succeeds in Craig Slade’s production.

The play is an ensemble effort, and, collectively, the cast have managed both the nuances and the boldness of the dialogue’s rhythms in their intonation – for the majority of the time. Apart from sporadic misjudged moments, and a falteringly slow-paced start, the rhythmic interplay between the characters is well-tuned.

Butterfield has, in this respect, the best technique of the cast with her verbal poise; and Blair complements her performance with his effectively dislikeable character. Blacksell, the self-appointed figurehead of the other table, has good comic timing, but his characterisation could afford to be a touch brasher to match the crudity of his wife and her sister Prue (Kitty Drake).

Like the speech, the staging is similarly poised and precise – while managing to suggest the required glamour of the restaurant, with champagne buckets, crisp white tablecloth and decorative flowers being sufficiently indicative. The costumes of the restaurant customers aspire towards elegance, but, satirically, the women’s heels are a little too high, the dresses a little too low or tight, and colour too bold. Ignoring the fumbled and underplayed banknote-tipping, and the clumsy final exit of the customers, Slade’s positioning of the actors is aesthetically balanced and considered.

Slade’s production fails, however, in the interpretation of the restaurant’s proprietors Richard (James Wilkinson) and Sonia (Maya Hambro). Unfortunately, Wilkinson is completely, irredeemably unbelievable as the owner of one of London’s most successful, popular and expensive restaurants. And this production seems not to recognise that the character of Richard is as repulsive as his customers. Instead, he is played as if he is uncomfortable in this environment and with his clientele – which, of course, is illogical given that he has constructed this ambience for his business.  What seems to have been missed here is that the restaurant staff and owners are smarmy sycophants, focused entirely on the prospect of a juicy tip from their wealthy customers at the end of the night.

Ben Pope’s Waiter is, nevertheless, very funny – he delivers his “interjection” speeches with seemingly effortless comic flair. His characterisation is, unexpectedly, rather amiably bumbling – bearing in mind, for the sake of contrast, that in the original production this character was played by Danny Dyer; quite a contrast. But it works well for Pope’s purposes, even though his niceness is slightly deleterious to the point of the play. His final interjection at the close of Celebration is poignant in its simple profundity; a welcome change from the superficiality of the customers he has been serving.