1957 was a very significant year as Harold Pinter wrote at the age of 27, his first three plays, The Room, The Birthday Party and The Dumb Waiter (and also your reviewer was born that year!) . Sixty seven years on, it is fascinating to see his work and appreciate the distinctive style that became known as Pinteresque in its earliest form. The air of menace, the repetitive use of dialogue, the famous pauses and often the single room setting in which very little happens, provide common elements to much of his work and often leaves the audience trying to piece together the truth from the fantasy and establish the reality of the relationships between characters on the stage.

It is uncomfortable to watch at times and feels a dated retrospective of a past era yet in the hands of good actors, there is something mesmeric and engrossing in watching Pinter’s characters encircling each other. The Ustinov Studio is a cramped and small auditorium with its tip up double seats and poor leg room, but it does at least create an intimacy which makes watching the performers all the more engaging. The Birthday Party was his first full length play in three acts and director Richard Jones’ production is wonderfully acted, a proper tribute to Pinter’ s legacy for British Theatre. 

Jane Horrocks is Meg Boles, married to Petey, played by Nicholas Tennant. She is the sixty-something northern landlady with a simple outlook on the world with a daily routine of providing for her husband. She brilliantly creates the wide eyed innocence with an acceptance of what she sees as the truth. Yet we, in the audience, can’t be sure of whether anything else is real or imagined and the contradictions in other characters lines adds to that sense of uncertainty and confusion. Is she running a boarding house in a seaside resort with guests or are the visitors imagined? Stanley has been staying there for a year apparently but who is he? Sam Swainsbury gives him nightmarish persona with mood swings and odd behaviour, often standing facing the wall on the brink of a breakdown. Who are the two new arrivals, the menacing Goldberg, played with great control and discipline by John Marquez, and his eerie Irish side kick, McCann, an understated menacing Caolan Byrne? Carla Harrison-Hodge plays the abused young girl Lulu. 

ULTZ’s set and costume design appears to provide the biggest clue to the production’s interpretation of the play. The bare box set in brown is minimalistically set with just a table and four chairs and a serving hatch in the rear wall to an unseen kitchen. The costumes are largely from a brown palate with the exception of Meg’s bright yellow party dress and Lulu’s pink frock. The front cloth that opens and closes each act creates the window from which Meg and Petey look out on the world. It suggests a fantasy world or a nightmare dream that the married couple imagine and which they are sharing with the audience.  It is as if the humdrum routine of their daily life, defined by the repeated line “What you doing”, “Reading”, “ Is it good?”, is lifted by imagining guests at their pretend boarding house. Or perhaps it is an imagined scenario from a guest house that Pinter had once stayed at? Will we ever know ?

All the themes that make The Caretaker such a brilliant play are also present in The Birthday Party and perhaps there is a slightly stronger comic element to this earlier play which creates amused ripples. The performances are faultless, the production has a clear vision and the intimacy of the venue adds to the experience and yet somehow the play is unsatisfactory except for the most die hard Pinter fans who will enjoy seeing this unusual bizarre play.

**** Four stars 

Reviewed by: Nick Wayne

The Birthday Party plays at the Ustinov Studio, Theatre Royal Bath until 31 August, with further info here.