Synopsis Stanley Webber is the only resident of a seaside boarding house run by Meg and Petey. His life is safe, comfortable but monotonous. Goldberg and McCann, two sinister strangers who arrive with a mysterious motive and throw Stanley a surprise birthday party, shatter their lives! This modern classic is an enigmatic comedy full of menace and psychological terror. Pinter's first full-length play was described as a masterpiece upon its debut performance in 1958. Gala Performance - Mon 19 May. This special performance marks the 50th anniversary of the opening of The Birthday Party at the Lyric. For more details call Jamie Lehrer on 020 8741 6819 or e-mail enquiries@lyric.co.uk
Sheila Hancock & Justin Salinger in The Birthday Party
Date: 14 May 2008
Fifty years after its infamous debut at the Lyric Hammersmith, The Birthday Party returned to the scene of its original failure this week (opening 12 May 2008, previews from 8 May) in a special anniversary production, which continues until 24 May, including a gala, hosted by author Harold Pinter himself, on the play’s actual birthday, 19 May.
The 1958 premiere production closed after just a week, having received a raft of scathing reviews. Only one critic, the Sunday Times’ Harold Hobson, spotted the potential of the young playwright, and Pinter often credits his glowing review as having saved his fledgling career.
The Birthday Party centres on unemployed musician Stanley, who leads a mundane but peaceful life as the only guest living with the mumsy doting Meg and quiet agreeable Petey. When the sinister Goldberg and McCann arrive, their intentions grow progressively ominous. Everyone, from the resort owners to the unsuspecting girl next door, becomes caught up in Stanley´s peculiar birthday party.
Pinter’s first full-length play, The Birthday Party contains many of the hallmarks, such as deliberately enigmatic plotting and the famous ponderous pauses, that went on to define him as one of the 20th century’s greatest playwrights.
So, 50 years on and safe in the knowledge that his reputation is secure, Pinter hardly needs Harold Hobson’s help this time around. Rather than a single good review, today’s critics gave the 50th birthday Party an almost unanimous thumbs up, many regretting the “good kicking” the piece received from their 1958 equivalents. There was praise too for the production’s performances, with Sheila Hancock singled out as “hilarious and touching” as the “terrifyingly dim landlady” Meg, and Justin Salinger gaining plaudits for his “riveting”, “venomous” and even “definitive” interpretation of her doomed lodger Stanley.
Michael Coveney on Whatsonstage.com (four stars) – “As Harold Pinter himself said on BBC Radio on the morning of the first night of this 50th anniversary production of The Birthday Party, the play is more pertinent than ever; two mysterious men knock on the door and take someone away. It happens all the time … The abiding vigour of this astonishing debut is honoured in Hancock’s glorious, self-deluding Meg, exchanging her headscarf and medical stockings for a rose-tinted gown on party night; and the sensationally effective performances of Nicholas Woodeson and Lloyd Hutchinson as the sinister apparatchiks, the one a nostalgic little Jewish monster, the other a quietly spoken Irish husk, a spaniel-like quisling swallowed in the great maw of political corruption and affiliation.”
Michael Billington in the Guardian (four stars) – “Fifty years after it was rubbished by the overnight critics, Harold Pinter's play is revived at the exact scene of the crime. But instead of seeing it as a now-revered classic, David Farr's bold idea is to direct it as brand new, and seek to recapture something of its original shock … Salinger plays Stanley as a venomous sadist who not only terrorises his doting landlady Meg but also puts up the fiercest possible resistance to his captors … Everything about this production is strange, mysterious and unsettling. Jon Bausor's set, with its bile-coloured walls and dirt-encrusted grate, looks like a nightmare refuge. Sheila Hancock's superbly smothering, mothering Meg emerges as a tragi-comic figure in her own right who remains to the very end cocooned in a world of private fantasy. In contrast, Alan Williams, as her husband, is a shrewd observer whose benevolent altruism completely throws the two intruders … Farr gives the play the best possible birthday party by conveying the dislocating oddity that so disturbed its original critics.”
Nicholas de Jongh in the Evening Standard (five stars) – “In 1958 this Pinter piece opened and closed within a week. Now David Farr’s brilliant, dark-night-of-the-soul production, lightened by frequent shafts of black comedy and the best version I have seen, ought to convince everyone of The Birthday Party’s classic status … Sheila Hancock’s wonderful Meg, simpleminded and skittish in her Rita Hayworth wig and floral pinafore, coos and flirts, drools and simpers over Salinger’s definitive Stanley in his flamboyant glasses, from behind which crazy eyes gaze. No actor playing the role before has made it so clear that Meg’s adored, presumably agoraphobic boarder is in the grip of some mental disturbance. His walk and expression advertise his alienated oddness … Nicholas Woodeson’s superb Goldberg, who keeps Lloyd Hutchinson’s bovine McCann under control, induces shudders of amusement with his winsome sentimentalities and silky, smiling menace. Farr thrillingly stages the birthday party festivities as a grotesque, grim comedy and the game of blind man’s buff when the lights go out, after Stanley is relieved of glasses, as if it were Agatha Christie turned sadistic and weird … A shockingly memorable night.”
Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph – “Fifty years ago next Monday, Harold Pinter’s first full-length play, The Birthday Party, opened at the Lyric Hammersmith. The following morning the reviews appeared, and the critics unanimously gave it a good kicking … I’d like to think that had I been there on that famous first night, I’d have given the play a rave like Hobson, but I have a horrible suspicion that I’d actually have been among those dishing out the insults. For in this birthday revival of The Birthday Party, in the very theatre where Pinter received his baptism of fire, you can still see why most of the reviewers were so nonplussed by the play that they greeted it with bafflement and exasperation … David Farr’s production, with a down-at-heel guesthouse design by Jon Bausor that seems to encapsulate all the drabness of the Fifties, takes the play at an excessively leisurely, indeed almost reverent, pace. This is a piece that works best played fast and without an interval … I am left with the impression that if you took the cruelty and mockery out of Pinter’s work, precious little of substance would remain.”
Benedict Nightingale in The Times (three stars) – “Here's a revival to rub posthumous salt in any wounds still left in the corpses of those critics who, in May 1958, did their best to dispatch Harold Pinter's first full-length play to oblivion … That said, I've seen more trenchant productions than David Farr is staging at the Lyric. The first scene, with Meg the dim seaside landlady (Sheila Hancock) offering cornflakes and dopey conversation to her husband Petey (Alan Williams), comes across as a sneak preview of Joe Orton, with exaggerated Pete and Dud accents to match; but need it be played so slowly? It takes awfully long to establish the atmosphere of the sort of dingy B&B where you might find suicidal characters from Samuel Beckett among your fellow guests … Whatever the quality of this revival, it still shows the Nobel laureate-to-be at his most provokingly unpindownable.”
As Harold Pinter himself said on BBC Radio on the morning of the first night of this fiftieth anniversary production of The Birthday Party, the play is more pertinent than ever; two mysterious men knock on the door and take someone away. It happens all the time.
One can see why the first critics were mystified, though. Pinter’s language is both heightened and banal, his seaside boarding house setting grim and grimy, his characters an unprecedented (at that time) mix of caricature, nastiness and compassion. Those baffled, angry first night notices were not “disgraceful,” as one or two contemporary critics have piously asserted, but truthful testament to the shock of the new.
That shock is fairly well recreated in David Farr’s revival, which has a livid green lighting by Jon Clark, casting lots of Expressionist shadows on Jon Bausor’s filthily designed B&B with ducks on the wall flying against the receding perspectives. Stanley’s hosts, the monosyllabic deck chair attendant Petey (Alan Williams) and his mock-gracious, sexually underprovided wife Meg (Sheila Hancock) are grotesque seaside exhibits.
The delivery of the lines is slow and emphatic, Hancock in particular colouring each syllable with a strangulated wistfulness. Justin Salinger’s hapless lodger Stanley has grown into such inert sullenness that you understand fully a) why Sian Brooke’s sexy neighbour Lulu thinks of him as a complete wash-out; and b) why Monty’s men have come to remove him. His number’s up.
When Stanley meekly succumbs, after the blindman’s bluff humiliations at his own birthday party, he departs in a suit and red tie, curiously evocative of David Miliband and New Labour. You realise that the action is a metaphor of individuality and conformism, and that in his first play Pinter is announcing his great theme. Farr’s production takes us straight to another similar first play heavily influenced by The Birthday Party, Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman.
The abiding vigour of this astonishing debut is honoured in Hancock’s glorious, self-deluding Meg, exchanging her headscarf and medical stockings for a rose-tinted gown on party night; and the sensationally effective performances of Nicholas Woodeson and Lloyd Hutchinson as the sinister apparatchiks, the one a nostalgic little Jewish monster, the other a quietly spoken Irish husk, a spaniel-like quisling swallowed in the great maw of political corruption and affiliation.
It was of course at the Lyric in Hammersmith that the debut London run of Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party was staged, receiving such a bad press initially that it closed before the one positive notice appeared. It is probably thanks to that single complimentary review, by Harold Hobson in the Sunday Times, that the play did not disappear from sight and is able to make a fitting return to the Lyric to celebrate its own 50th birthday.
And David Farr's very fine production, which is more than worthy of the occasion, shows it is be not only still alive but very well indeed. Despite its age, and the fact that it is set at the time it was written, it feels new-minted, whilst the sense of unease, even fear, generated by its unexplained events seems not only more powerful but also more relevant than ever. Moreover, it is not just because we do not know what lies behind the seizure of Stanley by two ultimately sinister strangers that we are discomfited – we realise perfectly well that if we did understand this we would be even more afraid!
Jon Bausor's set evokes the dingiest of boarding-houses imaginable. Not very wide to begin with, it closes in as it goes further back, producing a distinctly claustrophobic effect only heightened by its brown-stained walls. And even if the room's somewhat utilitarian furnishings, and the costumes, did not evoke the period of the play – and they do - the three ducks on the wall would fulfil this role perfectly. Significantly they are flying in the direction of the door to the kitchen, as if they are trying to escape from their depressing surroundings.
The whole cast gave fine performances. Sheila Hancock's Meg was very sympathetic in her smiling simple-mindedness and her apparent lack of engagement with the real world, whilst Petey (Alan Williams) was noticeably concerned to protect her from learning that Stanley had been abducted. Nicholas Woodeson's Goldberg, though concealing his real nature beneath a down-to-earth geniality, rather than the urbane charm sometimes seen, was still terrifying when he revealed it, and Lloyd Hutchinson's McCann was clearly new to his job (whatever that was) and found its requirements so disturbing he could not wait to get it over with.
Most intriguing of all was Justin Salinger's Stanley who was by no means an obvious victim but had a much more complex personality, hinting at violent, perhaps even psychopathic, tendencies and probably being close to a complete mental breakdown even before Goldberg and McCann arrived. I wondered, in fact, just what his own role had been in whatever "organisation" he had escaped from!
In the half-century since that unfortunate debut production, The Birthday Party has triumphantly fulfilled Harold Hobson's positive predictions for its future and its standing is only enhanced by this wonderful anniversary staging. The play's very happy return to the Lyric ends soon – invite yourself to its own birthday party while you can!
- Janet Polson
17 May 08
It missed the mark for me, as simple as that. A year or so ago there was a wonderful production in the West End with Eileen Atkins as Meg, Geoffrey Hutchins as Petey, Paul Ritter as Stanley, and Henry Goodman as Goldberg. Aiden Gillen also appeared as the side kick McCann. I am sorry to say but I forget who played Lulu? Anyway, it was a far superior production. This one appeared to have all the ingredients, but didn't come together. I hear the Evening Standard reviewer has awarded it five stars! - WHY! Ms Hancock, who is a capable and fine actress, missed the mark with her portrayal of Meg entirely. It was this play and in particular the production which featured Eileen Atkins that turned Pinter around for me and let me enjoy his very particular style of writing. I would never consider Pinter a great writer (ooh! sacrilege!) too much of smoke and mirrors about him for my liking, but never the less he is an interesting writer. This production however just doesn't do him justice at all. Better luck next time. - rds
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