The Birthday Party

 The Birthday Party was received badly when it first opened in 1958 and lasted only a handful of performances. Harold Pinter is heralded as one of the 20th Century’s greatest playwrights even 60 years on, and this play is viewed as one of his finest.

Housed at the eponymous Harold Pinter Theatre, and in the capable hands of red-hot director Ian Rickson, Pinter’s thriller still feels darkly scary, and menacingly disorientating as it celebrates its own big 60th birthday.

Pinter never fully explained the story of the characters or situations in The Birthday Party. All he’d reveal was that the thriller was inspired by a rundown guest house in Eastbourne in the Fifties. Ramshackle and outdated, the character of the house is tinged with the poverty caused by the war.

We meet the owners, Petey and Meg, played by Zoe Wanamaker and Peter Wight. Their only lodger, Stanley, who has stayed one year, is something of a mystery. In the middle of his life, he is a clapped-out pianist who ‘once gave a concert’…

Cue menacing villains Goldberg and McCann, who rock up seemingly randomly at the guesthouse, but they’re actually hellbent on ruining Stanley’s birthday party, organized by bored housewife Meg, who craves Stanley’s attention over her aging husband’s.

Pinter’s neat trick of never revealing the key details about his characters disrupts and fascinates, even 60 years on. There are religious undertones to Goldberg and McCann, who are probably here to murder Stanley, but although the script implies their shared histories, no direct relation between the characters – or any factual knowledge about them – is ever given.

It is alluded to though, in the script, which has remained Pinter’s sternest weapon. His language relies on simple tricks, like repetition and wordplay, to both distance and draw the audience further into the dark matter of his themes: political resilience, loneliness, and the sheer notion of existing.

The mystery is all part of the game. Pinter said the play’s most important line was ‘don’t let them tell you what to do,’ so we can read Stanley as a symbolic lone ranger, victimized by two figures who likely represent ‘the state’.

It is never clear whether characters are revealing truths, or misinformation, as language contradicts itself, and the motives of Goldberg, McCann, and Stanley are largely unclear.

Ian Rickson’s battered set, with the likes of peeling wallpaper and plain furnishings, is dutifully in the period. There are calls for The Birthday Party to be modernized, but for this anniversary edition, the faithful staging feels like a good choice, especially because the play’s themes of rebellion and resistance feel modern enough as they are, in the wake of current political discourse.

Pinter’s play is driven by deep characterization, and Ian Rickson’s all-star cast is led confidently by Zoe Wanamaker. She is resoundingly tragic as housewife Meg, plagued by frustration but so easily lifted by circumstance.

Toby Jones does a stellar job of looking battered and bruised, both physically and mentally, as Stanley does. The character might remind film fans of the tortured victims in Michael Haneke's flick Funny Games; he is equally submissive in the face of horrific threats.

Stephen Mangan gets laughs from the script where Pinter wanted them, but he feels more hammy than charming and more wooden than menacing.

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, Goldberg’s misogynistic advances feel extra pronounced and Mangan gets the character’s inherent sleaze convincingly here.

What’s encouraging for fans of theatre (but a little worrying more generally) is how Pinter’s protagonist Stanley still feels thoroughly modern. He encapsulates the loneliness of existence, both as a single man, and persecuted outcast.