With Pinter’s ‘The Birthday Party,’ Praxis Stage makes a welcome return
CHELSEA — As the COVID pandemic has ebbed, small and fringe theater companies have been far slower to resume operations than midsize and large companies.
Within that worrisome context, Praxis Stage’s bracing production of Harold Pinter’s “The Birthday Party” serves as an illustration of what we’ve been missing.
Led by founder and artistic director Daniel Boudreau, Praxis Stage is tiny but ambitious. “The Birthday Party,” directed by James Wilkinson, is the company’s first show since February 2020.
Exemplifying the DIY, makea-virtue-of-necessity ethos that drives many smaller theaters, Boudreau is in the “Birthday Party” cast. Indeed, as a mysterious and intimidating figure named Goldberg, Boudreau is the single most compelling figure in the production.
Sunday’s matinee was a bit ragged around the edges, with one performance lacking in a key role. But on balance, the production does an admirable job pulling you into Pinter’s unnerving, destabilizing world, where the laws of logic and causation do not apply, and humor periodically glints like a piece of broken glass.
As Pinter’s first full-length play, “The Birthday Party” was the theatergoing public’s introduction to that hard-to-figure-out world. It premiered in 1958 to a hostile reception from London critics. Pinter, for his part, did not like that first production.
Some of the hallmarks of the playwright’s style can be seen and heard — the “heard” part is always crucial with Pinter — in “The Birthday Party.” The emphasis on atmosphere over plot. The playwright’s refusal to spell out motives for the things his characters do. The enigmatic dialogue that obscures more than it reveals while conjuring stirrings of dread. The sense that identity itself is up for grabs.
“The Birthday Party” takes place at a British seaside boardinghouse that has seen better days. Or maybe it hasn’t. There’s a weariness to the place, which is run by nervously eager-to-please Meg (Sharon Mason, excellent) and her disengaged husband Petey (Paul Valley).
(The six-member Praxis Stage cast does not essay English accents, and they largely eschew the “Pinter pause,” which is a cliche by this point.)
The sole boarder in the establishment is Stanley, a disheveled man in a bathrobe, portrayed by Zair Silva. Stanley has been the sole boarder for a year, apparently. On Sunday afternoon, Silva’s performance was too tentative in Act One, as if he was still getting his arms around the part. In Act Two — when Stanley is in deep trouble and cowed to the point of incoherence — Silva had a firmer fix on his character.
Meg is flirtatious with Stanley, but he treats her with contempt. She gets his attention, though, when she mentions that “two gentlemen” will be paying a visit to the boardinghouse. Stanley’s alarm and suspicion are warranted. The nattily attired Goldberg (Boudreau) and his companion, McCann (Kevin Paquette, deftly channeling movie gangsters from the 1930s), have a few questions for Stanley.
It leads to a doozy of an interrogation scene, when Goldberg and McCann fire question after question at the hapless Stanley, from the specific (“Why did you leave the organization?”) to the non sequitur (“Why did the chicken cross the road?”) Questions flicker across the mind: Are they enforcers from the mob, or from a totalitarian state? A religious organization? Do they even have the right guy?
Meg keeps insisting it’s Stanley’s birthday; he keeps insisting it isn’t. A twentysomething visitor named Lulu (Darya Denisova, doing what she can in an underwritten part) had earlier shown up with a package for Meg. It contains her birthday present for Stanley: a toy drum.
Praxis Stage is presenting “The Birthday Party” in the black box space on the first floor of Chelsea Theatre Works. The seating capacity for the space is roughly 60. At Sunday’s matinee the audience was maybe a third of that.
It’s a shame, because this production deserves to be seen, and a reminder that the local theater scene cannot be considered fully recovered until companies of all sizes are back in business.