Pinter’s ‘Birthday Party’ is worth celebrating at ACT
We don’t know much, and what little we’re told seems hard to believe.
The sad little boarding house in “The Birthday Party” at American Conservatory Theater only has one lodger, and we’re told he’s been there a year, but the woman who runs the house talks about him like he’s been there much longer. Lodger Stanley (Firdous Bamji) supposedly used to be a professional pianist, but his story keeps changing, and the way his eyes dart around sure makes it seem like he’s lying.
Then two sinister men come looking for Stanley because of something he’s supposedly done, but the closer they come to talking about what that thing might be, the more their dialogue starts descending into nonsense.
The 1958 play by Harold Pinter — his first full-length play — is as bewitching as it is mysterious. It’s also the last show Carey Perloff is directing before she steps down as artistic director, though a successor has not yet been named.
“The Birthday Party” became the first Pinter play produced in the United States when San Francisco’s Actor’s Workshop did it in 1960. Although this is the first time ACT has produced it, Perloff directed it in 1989 at Classic Stage Company in New York, with the nowdeceased playwright in the room. She’s shown a real affinity for Pinter in several productions at ACT, including “Old Times” (1998), “The Homecoming” (2011)
and a double bill of “Celebration” and “The Room” (2001). Previous to Perloff’s tenure, the only Pinter the company had done had been “Old Times” in 1984.
What really stands out in her production is how funny the play can be. Some of that is certainly due to two-time Tony Award winner Judith Ivey’s delightfully dotty performance as Meg, the landlady, with her singsong voice and blithe enthusiasm as she dotes on Stanley. She’s well-paired
with Dan Hiatt’s unflappably good-natured Petey, her husband. If she doesn’t have quite the same chemistry with Bamji’s more subdued and surly Stanley, it’s not for lack of trying. Stanley as a character basically shuts down halfway through the play, but in Bamji’s sulky portrayal that process seems to have begun long ago.
Scott Wentworth is charmingly upbeat as the silver-tongued Goldberg, comically paired with Marco Barricelli’s gruff and anxious McCann, his lumbering subordinate. The two of them rattle off wonderful Beckettian backand-forth verbal volleys as their hostile interrogation of Stanley becomes an increasingly absurd stream of association. Julie Adamo is a sunny presence as young neighbor Lulu.
Nina Ball’s set is terrific, with amusingly drab floral wallpaper and a fragmented roof suspended high above the room as a simple suggestion of the unseen second floor. Darron L. West’s sound design includes an almost startling burst of magic jazz to separate the second and third acts, in lieu of a second intermission.
The third act, which contains some of the play’s more bewildering moments, doesn’t quite maintain the energy of the first two. On the whole, however, it’s a sharp and humorous production with a marvelous cast that makes for a worthy swan song for the outgoing artistic director.