The Party is a play by the British dramatist, actor and director Jane Arden (1927–82) which was first staged at the New Theatre, London on 28 May 1958.
The Party is, like much of Arden's other work for theatre, cinema and television, ground-breaking and innovative, in this case mainly for its daring exploration of mental illness and its effects on family dynamics.
As Simon Callow, in his book Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor (Methuen, 1987) says, 'The play actually anticipates a great deal of mid-sixties drama on the subject of society's imposition of conformity.'
There are also disturbing intimations of an incestuous relationship between the central character Ettie and her father Richard but, due to the moral climate and censorship restrictions of the 1950s, Arden could not explore this theme openly.
Curiously, no television or film version of The Party has ever been planned and this perhaps accounts partly for the play's relative obscurity in comparison with other contemporary works such as Look Back In Anger and A Taste of Honey.