Review: The Cocktail Party by T.S. Eliot

I picked up T.S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party on the side of a city street, one of a stack of books being thrown out by someone with a taste for poetry and Eastern religions, to judge by the other books. I gave it a quick scan and discovered it was a play, so I didn’t shelve it with my other poetry books. It made its way to the basement and I forgot it existed.

Then yesterday, there it was, in the dining room, somehow having made the trip back from the basement and into a place of prominence. I don’t know how this one book was spared in the frenzy of moving and packing and loading and donating, but it was. I read it this evening and was completely captivated by it.

The play is difficult to describe. It’s set in London and begins at a cocktail party. There is almost no physical action in the play. Rather, it’s a series of conversations between a half-dozen or so people, all of whom are having various sorts of existential crises. There is one shift of setting and many surprising connections are made between the various characters.

This can hardly be called a review, can it? Suffice to say the play’s stark rendering of people’s life choices was very moving and appealing to me, particularly at this moment in my life. I think I may try to get some folks together to read this play at some point. And in the meantime, I recommend it to you.