Although it is now regarded as a classic, Harold Pinter’s second play The Birthday Party met with a hostile reception on its first run at the Lyric Hammersmith in 1958. The strange, elusive plot and overwhelming air of oppression and menace saw the play dismissed as ‘lunatic ravings’ in The Guardian, while the Financial Times described it as ‘random dottiness’. In an interview with Michael Billington, the Nobel laureate said that he was worried his career would be finished by the disastrous notices.
It is easy to see why critics were shocked. The mid-1950s saw a shift in the focus of British drama, with the upper-class concerns of Coward and his generation being replaced by the working class dramas of the angry young men. Osborne’s Look Back in Anger had opened in 1956, and Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey was premiered only a couple of days before Pinter’s play. The Birthday Party takes the cramped domestic settings of these plays, but the behaviour of his characters is far removed from everyday experiences. Motivations are unclear, and the characters’ histories are often obscure. Pinter’s greatest works feature power struggles taking place in confined spaces; strangers unsettling the balance of domestic life, for seemingly no reason other than the urge to dominate.
The Birthday Party is set in a seaside boarding house in an unnamed English town, run by Mr Bowles, a deckchair attendant, and his wife. Their only lodger is Stanley, an unemployed pianist in his thirties. Life is dominated by routine, but there is a strange atmosphere from the off. The relationship between Mrs Bowles and Stanley alternates between maternal affection, flirtation and occasional bursts of rage from the lodger. The status quo is disrupted when Mr Bowles mentions the possible arrival of two men, Goldberg and McCann – suddenly, Stanley’s comfortable position is put under threat. When the men arrive they begin to dominate proceedings with their verbal skills, backed by the unspoken physical threat of McCann, menacing Stanley with vague threats and allusions until he is reduced to an inarticulate wreck.
In Blanche McIntyre’s new production for the Royal Exchange Theatre, the air of menace which permeates the play is closely linked to political oppression. Stanley’s ragged blue and white striped pyjamas are eerily evocative, whilst the intruders sport black shirts. As Goldberg and McCann begin to use their words to hypnotic effect, marginalising Stanley in public and interrogating him in private, Mr and Mrs Bowles are powerless to intervene. They sink back into routine after Stanley’s breakdown, guilty at having allowed such a situation to develop in their own home but unable to reassert themselves over the younger intruders, with their mixture of eloquence, deceit and thuggery.
The setting of the play, a 1950s working class household with its drinks cabinets, sideboards and footstools, is relatively unfamiliar to an audience watching in 2013. There is an implication that living in such a stuffy environment is a causal factor in the power struggle to come, reinforced by the clever lowering of the ceiling as the lights go down and during scene changes – the sense of claustrophobia and menace is foregrounded from the beginning. As in The Servant, Pinter’s great film collaboration with Joseph Losey, the domestic setting reflects the state of the characters’ minds. Here, the walls are literally closing in on Stanley.
The performances are strong. Paul Mcleary and Maggie Steed, as Petey and Meg Bowles, provide a gentle, comic opening, before becoming slowly marginalised in their own homes. Ed Gaughan is an excellent Stanley, fluctuating between repulsive and pitiable, and Danusia Samal makes the most of her role as Lulu. The highlight, though, is the verbal interplay between Desmond Barrit, as Goldberg, and Keith Dunphy as McCann, particularly in the second act. Able to adapt to their audience, they are alternately charming, ruthless, seductive, vicious and mollifying, the ends always justifying their means. They represent the danger of unchecked power, leaving a shattered home behind them as they leave.
If The Birthday Party isn’t as shocking today as it was for critics on its opening run, the writing still possesses a visceral, unsettling quality, and this production presents an interesting and relevant interpretation of the power struggles in Pinter’s script. Pinter’s ability to combine the realistic settings of the angry young men with absurd behaviours more commonly associated with Beckett’s characters is uniquely disturbing, even now, and the cast brings this clash of styles to life excellently.
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