A second, and even better Birthday Party'

Press, 14 August 1978, Page 6

A second, and even better Birthday Party'

Bv HOWARD Mc.NAI GHTON "The Birthday Party.” 1 by 1’ rold Pinter. Directed by Bryan Aitken for The Court Theatre, Christchurch Arts Centre. Running time: 8.15 p.m. to 10.30 p.m. Two years ago. Bryan Aitken did a 75-minute lunch-'l time abridgement of this* play a production of considerable educational value with a balanced sampling of those qualities of comedy,, ausper.se. agoraphobia, and inconsequence that seemmost characteristic of Pinter.’ In fact, that production seemed to represent the | author so well that one might have thought Mr Aitken would have had nothing more to add. Surprisingly, this product.on could scarcely be more different. Every characterisation has been significantly and interestingly rethought: th** structure of suspense is fashioned quite differently: end the moral perspective of' the whole action is inescapable. The central premise on which this production is based has been discus-red for many years, but I have!

never heard of it being ap-| ’plied as emphatically to this) , play. Pinter's father, as is: widely known, was a Jewish | tailor in Hackney; Pinter’s! drama, it has cogently been! argued, is all based on “a! ’ specifically Jewish ethos of fear.” John Givins’s Goldberg is[the immediate key to this! I interpretation — a displaced, * middle-aged Jew in search of[ a tribe, effusing fragments! of an ideology mingled with! the mottoes of bourgeois af-i : fluence. He is dominant in [ [the scenes of ritualised in-! itimidation. and Tony Wah--'ren’s very Irish McCann, unfrocked only six months ago. I presents a highly truculent] proselyte. Viewed in this way. the boarding-house where all the action is located symbolises the barren futilitv of escap-l ling from Jewish identity. I J-’elen Smith’s Veg has none of the usual quavery senil-. ity; instead, she radiates a] ■ stupid blandness that epito-I mis»s the hollowness of ■ b ardins-house existence. Judy Gibson's Lulu is not! the tarty caricature we ex-1 ,pect: empty-headed the char-! acter still is. but with cred-! ible emotional needs. Petey was omitted alto-l

Ige’her in the 1976 production: here, he returns in [John Watson’s interpretation! [as a sharp, well-spoken, introverted old chess-player,'] I who is allowed his own] [ poignantly-tiny moment of! : tragic assertion at the end; ;on one level, the whole play I [is his. I But it is, again, Philip; 1 Holder’s Stanley that, pro-' perly, monopolises our sym-[ Ipathies and our perspective.! [He is the only actor return-! ling from the earlier produc-j tion, and his performance; [ has the same very disturbing [brillia ■: but. with the Jevv-i [ish element accentuated, his [third-act appearance has a[ 'brutalising explicitness, with! ['he moronic boy brought ondressed and made up like a I tailor’s dummy, and taken' away wearing a hat like (Goldbergs. One cannot prove an interpretation of Pinter any’ [more than one can insist | (that he is the stuff of which! classics are made: in this! ’production, a few details ofj , writing, set design, and act-i [ing jar, but the united’ [weight of interpretative and’ acting strength has an[ authority that is difficult to! J resist.