The Birthday Party at Lyric Hammersmith

The Birthday Party at Lyric Hammersmith

21 July, 2008
by: Dominick

This limited season production marks the 50th anniversary of the first production also at the Lyric Hammersmith of Pinter's classic drama. On that first occasion, The Birthday Party was greeted by a salvo of hostile reviews, and closed after just eight performances.

However, one critic, Harold Hobson in the Sunday Times, disagreed and wrote: 'I am willing to risk whatever reputation I have as a judge of plays by saying that Pinter possesses the most original, disturbing and arresting talent in theatrical London'. Mr Pinter, he added, will be heard of again…

The passage of fifty years has certainly not dented that well-earned commendation. The play's period seediness comes across the footlights in waves, and the characters seem victims rather than initiators of the action.

They might well feel so in the exceptionally well evoked boarding house, presided over by Sheila Hancock's Meg, trying against the odds to bring off the birthday celebrations. Sian Brooke as Lulu makes up the distaff side of the company, while the sinister male contingent is augmented by the arrival of Goldberg and McCann, fellow visitors one would certainly rather not share even a less unpromising boarding house than this.

A masterpiece of a play, The Birthday Party lays out before the audience a melange of human motives and actions which are also, of course, intensely funny as well as moving. After the building up of tension at Meg's unhappy lodgings, the occasional appearances of her older husband brings a sense, to this viewer at least, of something a great deal nearer to the normal than the dysfunctional company around him.

In all respects the play earns its keep, including a staging in a wholly satisfactory setting, which is what its patrons have come to expect of the Lyric Hammersmith.

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Dominick