Compelling, challenging production of The Birthday Party

The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter
Potent Pause Productions
Musgrove Studio
University of Auckland
Until March 31st

In the first scene of “The Birthday Party” Meg asks Petey about the newspaper he is reading, She says “What does it say?” and he replies “Nothing much”.

Actually nothing much happens in the play either, or at least nothing which really makes sense. Each audience member will make up their own interpretation of the plot based on their perception of the six characters. The play could be more accurately called “Six Characters In Search Of a Story”

Each of the six characters interacts with each other but they seem to be caricatures who never really have a relationship. The dialogue is naturalistic, full of general banality of everyday interaction, but the characters talk past each other, mishearing and misinterpreting what is being said.

Two strangers, Goldberg and McCann arrive at a beachside boarding house owned by Meg and Petey. The other tenant Stanley is apprehensive about them. They bully him, help celebrate his birthday and then take him away.

This is a play of shadowy emotions and events. There are social and political metaphors here about the state terrorism, the insidious creep of organised crime or the alienation of individuals in society. But it is the emotional charges throughout the play, ranging from the comic to the tragic which make the work provoking and riveting.

To make this happen needs a cast of superior talent and director Raymond Hawthorne has assembled actors who create a real sense of comic menace.

Darian Takle’s vacuous Meg and the nondescript Petey played by Kevin Wilson provide the background of ordinariness into which step the eccentric Stanley (Joseph Rye), the creepy McCann (Jonathan Allen) with his IRA connections and the suave but sinister thug (Michael Lawrence). Lulu played astutely by Fern Sutherland provides a rare glimpse of genuine perception and reality.

The language of the play its with obscure philosophical and historical asides, non sequiturs and extravagent invention combines everyday naturalism and poetry which is carefully crafted by the actors.

They develop characters which are not created by what they say but rather how they say it along with their distinctive acting. They make all their lines appear both comic and ominous at the same time. This is helped by Pinter’s potent pauses – long breaks where the audinece becomes uncomfortable waiting for either the joke or the savage outburst.

All this creates a tense Kafkaesque atmosphere in a mesmerizing drama which is as compelling and challenging as it was fifty years ago