A BRAND new mini-theatre in St Albans is putting on a Harold Pinter double bill for a week-long run. Celebration and Party Time mark OVO s debut at its new home, the former Paton s Bookshop. The plays open tomorrow night (Friday) at the Ovo Theatre in Sum

A BRAND new mini-theatre in St Albans is putting on a Harold Pinter double bill for a week-long run.

Celebration and Party Time mark OVO's debut at its new home, the former Paton's Bookshop.

The plays open tomorrow night (Friday) at the Ovo Theatre in Sumpter Yard, St Albans and runs nightly at 8pm until October 31 (apart from Tuesday and Wednesday).

In Party Time, a fashionable London power-broker is throwing a party. His guests prattle of exclusive health clubs, idyllic island retreats and past romantic liaisons while, in the streets outside, there is a violent disorder which is being savagely suppressed. Under the drawing-room elegance, private relationships echo public brutality.

Celebration features two sets of diners in an expensive restaurant trading stories of affairs and casual insults. But there is a good deal going on just under the tablecloths. Neither group is really in any mood for celebration and, as the wine loosens their tongues, some extremely unpleasant truths start to crawl out from the past. The only visible knives here may be the ones on the elegantly laid tables, but people are also getting laid and knifed, only this time with a smile.

In these two violent, wildly funny plays Harold Pinter confronts us with the image of a style-conscious, narcissistic society cut off from and culpably indifferent to the intolerance and squalor of the outside world.

Tickets priced �7.50 and �5 (concessions) are available from the box office on 07807 521436 or online at www.ovo.org.uk.