THE BIRTHDAY PARTY.

London

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
by Harold Pinter

Duchess Theatre
Mon-Sat .730pm Mat Wed & Sat at 3pm
Runs 2hr 15min One interval

TICKETS: 0870 890 1103 (+£1.50 booking fee per ticket)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 26 April

A Birthday Party that's a real treat.Presumably Harold Pinter's remark that his plays show the weasel under the cocktail cabinet was made after 1958, when The Birthday Party first appeared. Meg and Petey's seaside boarding-house wouldn't know what to do with a cocktail if it were offered one. Though Peter McIntosh's set overplays the dirt and dilapidation. Tasteless and shabby, yes, but for Meg to praise this establishment with its cracks and peeling undermines her sense of reality, and therefore the action.

It's the only drawback to an outstanding production, where Pinter's famous comedy of menace' applies unusually to Meg herself. Eileen Atkins gives her a provocative walk, while her initial recoiling at regular guest Stanley's use of the word succulent soon reverses into an encouraging tone.

With a lesser actor the interpretation would be limiting; here it sets a tremendous dynamic for someone who's not at all bright, her face working with self-aware craft and concentration on minimal matters or going off on the wrong track, from the moment it first pops wide-eyed through the serving-hatch. No wonder Geoffrey Hutchings' husband confines himself to the paper (the Daily Express' with successive days' front-page headlines about the TUC and Aneurin Bevan silently encapsulating a different era) and auto-pilot replies, letting life, and Meg, go by.

A force whirls through the house with two newcomers who have clearly (if for no clear reason) targeted the unsympathetic Stanley. Paul Ritter's unshaven, petty bullying Stanley stretches across the table to torment Meg; the unspoken interplay between them links to the climactic sexual assault he later makes in the dark on young neighbour Lulu.

Of the newcomers, Finbar Lynch's McCann is a worrier, turning away from others when not directly getting at Stan, a look of perpetual misery and toothache about his features. An essential follower, he's the opposite of Henry Goodman's assured Goldberg, who switches as powerful personalities can from assertive bonhomie to threat, dominating the room in either mode.

With Sinead Matthews giving the sexually exploited Lulu both individuality and dignity in her lost innocence and Lindsay Posner's ever-scrupulous direction this is one Birthday Party not to miss.

Petey: Geoffrey Hutchings
Meg: Eileen Atkins
Stanley: Paul Ritter
Lulu: Sinead Matthews
Goldberg: Henry Goodman
McCann: Finbar Lynch

Director: Lindsay Posner
Designer: Peter McIntosh
Lighting: Hartley TA Kemp
Sound: John Leonard
Assistant director: Katie Read
Assistant Lighting designer: Phil Bentley

2005-04-27 12:18:02