The Birthday Party

Revival of Pinter's The Birthday Party, c Alastair Muir

A 50th anniversary is a great excuse for a celebration- and this momentous occasion is a revival of The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter. It’s half a century since the play’s London debut at the Lyric in Hammersmith and we return to the same venue for the party – although this one is a bit like the kind that teenagers might throw while their parents are away. The idea may seem like fun, but when uninvited guests arrive, things start to get scary and out of control.

Closeted inside this theatre, with its old-fashioned red plush interior,  director David Farr firmly sets the scene– just as the original production -  in the late fifties: a knitted cosy on the teapot, an off-white antimacassar draped over an armchair, a lampshade with the fringe hanging off.       

In a run-down seaside boarding house reminiscent of Fawlty Towers, absent-minded landlady Meg, (Sheila Hancock) in Nora Batty-style wrinkled stockings, produces endless brews of stewed tea and thinks fried bread is haute cuisine.
Hancock gives Meg a girlish naivety:  anxious to please, fussing over her long-suffering husband Petey, deck-chair attendent, whose decent but dull character is delivered by Alan Williams in dreary monotone.

Meg is equally attentive to her lodger Stanley,  portrayed by Justin Salinger as an oddball whose barely contained  nervous energy erupts in moments of irascibility and outlandish behaviour.

This seemingly uneventful set-up, matched by the banality of the opening exchanges, is about to change when two strangers arrive to threaten the fragile status quo.

These sinister  men in dark suits,  Goldberg and McCann,  ((played by Nicholas Woodeson and Lloyd Hutchinson),  appear to have some unspoken past history with Stanley and start to bully and threaten him.
It’s hard to see how a man  such as Goldberg could attract the skittish blonde Lulu  (Sian Brooke), who at first flits around like a butterfly, but as the mood darkens she becomes drawn to him like a moth to a flame, and ends up getting burnt.

The tension builds to a climax, and the moment when McCann snaps Stanley’s glasses – a literal and figurative breaking point - produced an audible gasp from the audience. 

This is Pinter’s speciality – the so-called comedy of menace,  the idea being to create  a commonplace set-up that develops into an increasingly absurd and threatening situation, driven by words and actions that seem inexplicable on a purely rational level.

Yes, I’ve had moments like that while on the phone to British Gas. 

The comedy is not played for easy laughs, it is more to do with unease, the release and relief we feel when faced with a perceived threat then manage to evade it. But the dark humour of the first act dissolves in the second, as the threats become more real.

The atmosphere is evoked by repetitive dialogue,  meaningful pauses, lighting which casts eerie double shadows,  one scene in darkness punctuated by  torchlight, and startling sound effects ranging from the ferocious beat of a drum (a bizarre birthday gift from Meg to Stanley) to the sound of a car driving away - an unremarkable event marking one of the most terrifying moments of the play.  

All this adds up to the mood known as  “Pinteresque” – and we have to acknowledge that a playwright is a significant figure when a style is named after him.

When the Birthday Party was first performed at the Lyric, it  was slammed by the critics -  the only one who praised it was Harold Hobson in the Sunday Times -  and closed after a week, even though it had previously been well-received in both Oxford and Cambridge. 
Perhaps it was ahead of its time – or maybe it was too close to the past that it hints at – carrying echoes of Nazism in its warning of how unacceptable situations can creep up on society, at first subtly worming their way in, then covertly, then more openly, menacingly, finally with brute force, until it is too late to stop the onslaught.

This may be the kind of drama which raises as many questions as answers, but at least there are clues to the mystery, suggestions that sinister agents working for higher authorities can turn up to interrogate unsuspecting victims and spirit them away to an unspeakable fate. Is it paranoia, or are they really out to get us?

The Birthday Party is  Pinter’s second – he went on to write  29 in total - and  won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, then turned his attention to writing anti-war poetry.

Given the number of political regimes around the world in which the misuse of power leads to the abuse of humanity,. if this is the underlying theme of Pinter’s work, then the message is both timeless and timely. 

It's  difficult to bring a fresh twist or  new perspective to a drama which has been staged so many times, and although its ability to amuse and shock by turns has been dimmed by familiarity and the passage of time, it is not entirely diminished.

This is a fond tribute to mark the 50-year milestone, and a fitting way to celebrate the work of a playwright who started off as a radical newcomer and went on to become a venerable member of the theatrical establishment. 

Angela Lord

The Birthday Party, 50th Anniversary production The Lyric Theatre, Lyric Square, King Street, Hammersmith, W6 0QL, until 24th May. www.lyric.co.uk

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