A Birthday Party with too little to celebrate
This Pinter party is simply not creepy enough
The Birthday Party GaietyTheatre Until June 4
Harold Pinter’s 1958 play has the distinction of being one of his most durable works and also, initially, a major flop. It was well received when it opened in the provinces but when it reached London, the top critics, with one exception, slammed it.
The story has all the elements of a mystery and a thriller, but ultimately it seems to go nowhere. It has lots of dialogue that suggest criminal behaviour but no proper detail about the characters or what’s going on – if anything. Which leaves it wide open to any interpretation or none.
One critic described it as a Hitchcock movie with the last reel missing. Another wrote that the dialogue was full of ‘half gibberish and lunatic ravings.’
It closed after the first week. Which was a pity because, before the end of that week, Harold Hobson of The Sunday Times reviewed it and changed everything. What he saw was a terrifying play about people ‘who will appear one day, looking for you, and you can’t get away’. Terror, in fact, the sinister knock on the door.
To tell the truth, it’s easy to see why people might have been bemused at a first viewing. It concerns Stanley (Gareth Bennett Ryan), a lodger in a boarding house, a fantasist who may or may not have been a good pianist. One thing is certain – he wants no interference with his reclusive life. Then two total strangers, Goldberg and McCann arrive, determined to help him enjoy his birthday, whether he likes it or not. He doesn’t, and gets aggressive. It may not even be his birthday and anyway, it’s none of their business.
It’s at that point the play ceases to be realistic and becomes a type of political allegory about the norms of society being imposed on the individual, a favourite hobbyhorse of Pinter’s. The words shouted at Stanley as he is finally led away could have been spoken by Pinter himself: ‘Stan, don’t let them tell you what to do.’
Goldberg and McCann, in the language they use in their savage interrogation of Stanley and their attempts to crush him can be taken as representing, among other things, the demands of religion – Judaism and Catholicism in particular. Pinter had rejected the Jewish religion as a young teen.
Because all this is mixed up with joviality and fun, it takes a very sure-footed director to get across the full nature of the terror being carried out, especially by Goldberg. Jonathan Ashley captured his various characteristics, the outward façade of philosophical wisdom, convivial and charming to the owners of the boarding house, flirtatious and predatory with the visitor Lulu, and utterly dictatorial with Stanley.
The other roles were wellplayed but the production as a whole didn’t have the sense of unease that should creep in from the moment we hear of the two men asking questions outside. The first act in particular needed speeding up and a greater contrast between the blissful ordinariness of the owners, the chirpy Meg and Petey, and the subtly changing atmosphere. And the final scenes didn’t leave quite the sense of horror at what has gone on.