A Birthday Party that shows its age
SIXTY years on, Harold Pinter’s absurdist The Birthday Party is starting to creak like the floorboards of a cheap boarding house.
The play’s latest West End production, directed respectfully by Ian Rickson, has a lot going for it — a sumptuous cast and handsome set.
But the language, so key to Pinter, and the setting now belong to a different era. They are as dated as Oscar Wilde’s plays were in 1957 when Pinter wrote this.
Pinter addicts will find plenty to relish. Zoe Wanamaker is on tremendous form as Meg, the dotty, vulnerable landlady of the boarding house where the runty Stanley (Toby Jones) has taken refuge.
Stanley claims to be an out-of-work concert pianist, one of many likely tales in Pinter’s land of careless lies. Meg dotes on him. But when two suited heavies arrive, Stanley’s unease suggests a murky past and it is all beyond innocent Meg’s ken.
Deceit, menace, hopeless yearnings: such things never age. But the particulars of Meg’s breakfast kitchen, her lower middle- class witterings and the play’s contemporary references ( Lyons Corner Houses and Boots libraries) root this story in the bleak post-war era.
Pinter’s keen ear for the trite — as in Meg’s repeated, inane use of the word ‘nice’ — is vital in conveying the humdrum. That, in turn, is essential if we are to relish the play’s despair. The problem is that everyday English has changed vastly since 1957, as has much else. From the doleful plate of fried bread to the game of blind man’s buff, the social mapping is antiquated and now tastes nostalgic rather than drab.
Let it be said that Peter Wight is superb as Meg’s burly but powerless husband Petey.