The Birthday Party - Review

Ustinov Studio, Bath

*****

Written by Harold Pinter

Directed by Richard Jones

Jane Horrocks, Carla Harrison-Hodge and John Marquez

One of Pinter’s earliest plays, The Birthday Party’s plot defies explanation. Written in the 1950s and set in a boarding house in an unnamed English seaside town, Meg and Petey own the establishment, Stanley is a long-term resident, Lulu is a glamorous local girl and friend of the household and then, upsetting the already fragile equilibrium, come Goldberg and McCann who throw this gentle world into complete and unsettling disarray. Imagine, if you will, a fusion of the BBC’s Fawlty Towers, ITV’s George and Mildred, with a dash of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho thrown in for good measure and even then, in all honesty, you will not be any closer to unfathoming where this story has come from, nor how it ends. But you know what? That really doesn’t matter. Pinter’s finest writing is pure Absurdism and for such writing to take flight requires a high-calibre, finely-tuned company – and it is such a troupe that Richard Jones has assembled in Bath.

Jane Horrocks is Meg and such is this actor's versatility that it is almost impossible to believe that it is Horrocks playing this apparently small-minded and delightfully dotty little landlady. Pinter’s language fuses the everyday and the mundane – and Horrocks’ interpretation of the mundanity is simply a joy to behold. Nicholas Tennant is Petey, a municipal deckchair attendant – again a character from the most ordinary slice of life, and yet when given Pinter’s dialogue, elevates the everyday into excellence.

Sam Swainsbury is Stanley, the birthday celebrant and a man with a clearly damaged background, although the cause and circumstances of whatever trauma has befallen him is never revealed. Swainsbury captures Stanley’s mental fragility in a beautifully weighted performance that has the audience crying out for him with their empathy. Carla Harrison-Hodge plays Lulu in what is one of the play’s smaller roles, but to which she delivers an enormous amount of (ultimately) damaged complexity.

Sam Swainsbury and Jane Horrocks

And then there are Goldberg and McCann, the villains of the piece, played by John Marquez and Caolan Byrne respectively. Marquez is brilliant in capturing so much of what makes Goldberg evil. Is it the predatory sleaze or the wafer-thin veneer of polished charm? Either way Marquez’s (and Byrne’s) mastery of Pinter’s quickfire interrogatory style is outstanding. And again, for both characters to slip into the Jewish or Irish-Catholic heritage of their respective youths is yet another masterclass in outstanding writing, brilliantly performed.

John Marquez, Carla Harrison-Hodge and Caolan Byrne

And for all of the characters, from Meg to McCann, Pinter makes it clear that there is so much more to them than meets the eye.

This production of The Birthday Party needs to follow Jones’ recent Machinal into a London run. A gripping, complex, troubling play that is by no means an evening of easy entertainment. It is however, flawless theatre.

Runs to 31st August

Photo credit: Foteini Christofilopoulou

The Caretaker - Review

Chichester Festival Theatre, Chichester

*****

Written by Harold Pinter

Directed by Justin Audibert

Ian McDiarmid and Adam Gillen

In what was to be Harold Pinter’s first significant commercial success, The Caretaker has proved one of his most performed and studied works. So Justin Audibert – recently appointed Chichester's Artistic Director - sets a high bar for this production.

Audibert delivers spectacularly. In this curious tragicomedy, part theatre of the absurd, part realism (the dialogue at times is like a whirl through the capital’s A-Z Street Map) Pinter has the capacity to make us laugh and cry at this dissection of a bizarre glimpse of West London life. Ian McDiarmid leads as Davies, a tramp, brought in off the streets by Aston (played by Adam Gillen) into his dingy bedsit. Completing the trio of players is Jack Riddiford’s Mick, Aston’s brother.

This interpretation of Pinter’s dialogue is sublime. McDiarmid’s Davies, forever journeying to Sidcup for his papers, captures the quick-wittedness of the old man – a quickness and a devious nastiness that is matched only by his physical frailty and weakness. McDiarmid savours every word and his Davies is a masterclass in Pinter.

Gillen has possibly the toughest role – having to capture a man whose mental energy was truncated in his youth by an insensitive and brutal application of ECT. His tragedy is of a life cut down and of a man imprisoned inside his permanently damaged mind. That Davies sees and exploits that weakness offers up a moment of on-stage cruelty that is heartbreaking. Aston’s famous monologue at the end of the first half in which we learn of the unspeakable cruelty that he was subject to, is Gillen’s tour de force.

Mick is one of Pinter’s enigmas. A menacing wide-boy, yet who reacts with a fierce sibling loyalty when Davies mocks his brother’s mental disabilities. Riddiford perfectly captures Mick’s complex violent undertone.

All three characters have profound vulnerabilities and it is to this cast’s credit that they exploit Pinter’s writing immaculately, allowing us to watch an emotional bear-pit of human suffering.

And then there is the simple, brilliant wit of Pinter’s writing. Listen closely and reflect that when The Caretaker opened in 1960, that Galton and Simpson’s Steptoe and Son (also set off the Goldhawk Road) was to air on the BBC barely two years later. Pinter’s influence on those brilliant TV scripts is clear and there is more than a hint of Albert Steptoe in McDiarmid’s Davies. Pinter’s absurd use of the London vernacular was later echoed by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in their Derek and Clive recordings.

The Caretaker’s words and oh, those pauses, are a joy to encounter. This is Pinter done to perfection.

Runs to 13th July

Photo credit: Ellie Kurttz

The Homecoming - Review

Young Vic Theatre, London

****

Written by Harold Pinter

Directed by Matthew Dunster

Jared Harris

Matthew Dunster’s revival of The Homecoming is one of the most entertaining interpretations of Pinter to have graced a London stage in years.  In this definitively dysfunctional family, a cracking cast offer up a monstrous quintet of generation-spanning brothers and the one woman who is wife/in-law/niece to them all.

Harold Pinter’s dialogue is genius. Written in 1964, he captures the essence of London banter. Listen closely to hear how Pinter influenced the likes of Galton and Simpson’s Steptoe and Son, Leon Griffiths’ Arthur Daley and Barrie Keefe’s Harold Shand. His are the words and style of Hackney and of Soho, refracted through this family’s amoral prism.

The elder generation is neatly portrayed by the Arthur Lowe-esque Nicholas Tennant as chauffeur Sam, with his brother Max (Jared Harris) a retired butcher and the father of the three younger brothers, attempting to play the patriarch of the household.

Among the next generation Joe Cole is pimp Lenny, David Angland is the brain-dulled boxer Joey, as Robert Emms plays Teddy, the PhD of this fraternal trio who has flown home from America with wife Ruth (Lisa Diveney)

All six are magnificent, shifting us from laughter to gasps of horror as the men attempt to impose their macabre misogyny upon Ruth - who in turn proves to be an equally devious foil to their vile intentions. 

Throughout the evening, Sally Ferguson’s lighting plots enhance the drama on Moi Tran’s simply suggested set.

The Homecoming is a finely crafted glimpse into a household of grotesques, making an evening of fabulous theatre. 

Runs until 27th January 2024

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan

No Man's Land - Review

Wyndhams Theatre, London


*****

Written by Harold Pinter
Directed by Sean Mathias

Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart

Every once in a while the theatrical planets align to create a pairing of such fine actors that it may well be unmatched for a generation. So it is with Harold Pinter's absurdist gem No Man's Land, a work that’s always best played by starry knights. Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud first created Pinter’s curious curmudgeons during the National Theatre's residency at the Old Vic in 1975. Today the honours fall to Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart who again re-unite to lead an evening of theatre that remains as perplexing as it is entertaining.

In their twilight years Hirst (Stewart) and Spooner (McKellen) chance upon each other in a pub on Hampstead Heath before retiring to Hirst's nearby mansion. We learn that both men have literary achievements of varying pedigree, but while the wealthy and patrician Hirst still exudes an air of the virile masculinity that that made him an accomplished ladies’ man in years past, Spooner, the shabbier by far, is a down on his luck gay poet who spends his time earning a few bob collecting glasses in another local pub and spying on clandestine homosexual liaisons on the Heath. As the alcohol flows, the bleakness of their respective no man's lands of old age gradually emerges.

It wouldn’t be Pinter without a sinister undertone, injected here by two younger men, Foster and Briggs (Damien Molony and Owen Teale respectively) who also reside with Hirst. Quite what or who they are isn’t defined, though the suggestion that they are poised to prey upon the old man's wealth is never far away.

Amidst this cocktail of comedy and conspiracy, Pinter's prose is a delight. Hirst hates the "solitary shittery" of his decline, whilst Spooner is threateningly taunted as a "minge juice bottler". The bravura of the text is as timely as Stephen Brimson Lewis' exquisite costuming, with the 1970s so perfectly defined that the play could almost be a fusion of Derek and Clive mixed with The Sweeney.

Acclaimed on Broadway (though one wonders how American audiences have ever managed a text so steeped in London's geography and vernacular) Sean Mathias extracts power as much as pathos and frailty from his leading men. There's a hint of Shakespeare in the play's nosings too. Consider in act two how a vulnerable Lear or Gloucester could be being channelled - with the younger men's brutality (think here of Regan’s Cornwall) merely being hinted at. 

For lovers of theatre, drama does not get better than this, especially with both McKellen and Stewart having evolved into latter day screen giants. Freed from the close-up confines of film and TV work the pair are unmissable, with an electrifying chemistry in their interaction

No Man's Land may ultimately remain as unfathomable as Pinter intended, but no matter. Much like a generous measure of one of Hirst's malts (and a 40 year one at that), this production offers performance and dialog and oh, those glorious pauses that merit being swirled around in a heavy glass, savoured and carefully contemplated.

Runs until 17th December

Photo credit: Johan Persson

The Hothouse

Trafalgar Studios, London

*****

Written by Harold Pinter

Directed by Jamie Lloyd

Simon Russell Beale and John Simm

The Hothouse is a delicious treat of a Pinter play. Unashamedly political, it encompasses sexiness, absurdity and menacing violence, as well as some brilliantly comic moments.

Simon Russell Beale is Roote, an ex-military man who leads the team at an undefined state institution, administering psychiatric treatments to its residents, none of whom are named, only numbered. John Simm is Gibbs his oleaginous but oh so perceptive number two, with eyes for Roote's job. It is Christmas, one patient has just died whilst another has just given birth to a child, apparently fathered by one of Roote's team. It is quite clear that Roote has lost his grip on managing the institution and Russell Beale plays him as a tragi-comic with gloriously controlled eye-popping incredulity. Think Basil Fawlty crossed with his long-term hotel resident, The Major and when in act two, Russell Beale directs his formidable acting firepower towards some perfectly timed slapstick involving whisky throwing and cake eating, the comedy is sublime.

By way of contrast, clean shaven Gibbs is no laughing matter at all, though his repartee with Roote is as good a double-act as you are likely to see. He has the measure of his buffoon boss, along with his colleagues and his elegant yet smarmy and duplicitous servility is another masterclass of performance. Where his fellow staffers only aspire to climb the ladder of promotion, Simms scales it ruthlessly and when his ambition and motive demand that his colleague Lamb be subject to brutal Electro Convulsive Therapy (ECT), Gibbs does not flinch from arranging the shocking voltage to be applied. The reasons for patients'  detention in this facility are never made clear, but the frequent references to “the Ministry” combined with Soutra Gilmour's brilliant set depicting a greying, publicly-funded government department, add weight to the suggestion that the unit adminsters a brutally harsh response to those who seek to challenge an authoritarian regime.

Key supporting cast are Harry Melling's Lamb and John Heffernan's Lush. Both are on the faculty staff albeit with different responsibilities and both deliver impressive monologues, mastering Pinter's complex concepts and Melling's delivery of his character’s reaction to the ECT is harrowing to watch. Indira Varma is Miss Cutts, a seductively attractive staff member who, trapped in the stifling hothouse of the institution , craves male approval and knows how to use her body to attract it. That actors of the stature of Clive Rowe and Christopher Timothy have been recruited for critical but nonetheless tiny cameo roles, speaks volumes for the cache and impact of this wonderfully slick production.

It's not a long show - each act barely 45 minutes or so, but the production is an accessible collection of performances that provides The Hothouse with a very fresh interpretation as well as also making it a useful introduction to Pinter for those not familiar with the writer’s work. Encapsulating absurdity and menace, as well as outstanding satire, this company rank amongst the best to be found on a London stage.  

Runs to August 3 2013

Merrily We Roll Along

Harold Pinter Theatre, London

*****

Book by George Furth
Music & lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Directed by Maria Friedman



Josefina Gabrielle leads the line in Musical Husbands

Some 6 months after it opened at the Menier Chocolate Factory, Maria Friedman's production of Merrily We Roll Along takes up a three month residence in the West End's Harold Pinter theatre. And like a fine wine or spirit, this production has beautifully matured over the months and should be savoured as a finely crafted piece of theatre.

This backward journey of composer Franklin Shepard's life, that opens in 1976 with his lover, his second wife and oldest closest friend deserting him amidst a party of vacuuous  Hollywood celebrities, is encapsulated in one line from the show's opening number (and title song) " how did you ever get there from here?" And it is that question that underlies Sondheim's lyrics and Furth's brilliant book as from there, almost as in some crazy, backwards whizzing theme park ride, this show hurtles us back in time through nineteen years, pausing only to chart the key events within the two friendships and marriages that Frank builds and then destroys.

This show has no gimmicks whatsoever. It is simply the finest assembly of musical theatre talent in town, led by the novice but nonetheless brilliant direction of Friedman, who herself  has built up a lifelong understanding of Sondheim's work.

Mark Umbers is Frank. A gifted composer whose talents are selfishly and callously wasted over the years in pursuit of cash and ultimately cocaine. The decline of his friendship with lyricist Charlie Kringas is deliciously spelt out by the writer, played by Damian Humbley as always at his very best, in a solo number Franklin Shepherd, Inc, in which Kringas, live on national TV,tells of his friend's love for contracts and cheque books over and above the more human passions of people and piano. Completing this doomed trio of friends is Jenna Russell's Mary Flynn (a role in fact played by Friedman in 1992). Of all the key characters, Sondheim gives Flynn no solo numbers, but don't be deceived. The very best of Sondheim's acerbic put-downs and one-liners, ever, are all hers and whilst her plaintive harmonies sung in Old Friends are exquisite her pain at losing her adored Frank to his first wife Beth, sung at their wedding in 1960 in a reprise of Not A Day Goes By, is gut wrenching.

Clare Foster's Beth is a beautiful, trusting, naive Southern Belle. When she ultimately learns of Frank's infidelity, her beauty displays a further facet, as hurt and betrayed she grief-stricken but fiercely protective and possessive of their young son, sings Not A Day Goes By as a solo set in 1967 outside of a New York divorce court. The song is immense. It destroys the audience, reduced this writer to a mess and is perhaps one of the most perceptive yet poetic descriptions ever written of selfless love that has been destroyed by a selfish partner.

Wife number 2 is Gussie Carnegie, an already divorced man-eater of a Broadway star, who finds Frank's zipper an easy if not submissively willng,  challenge to overcome. Josefina Gabrielle is a delight in this role, bereft early on in act one at rejection in favour of a younger starlet and stunning in the show-within-a-show number Musical Husbands. A true star of London's West End, Gabrielle's voice and presence only improves with her career.

This show has expanded perfectly to fit the impressive Harold Pinter proscenium. Sound and movement have all been seamlessly upgraded to tackle the larger stage and David Hersey's subtle lighting adds masterful touches. Catherine Jayes easily takes her ten piece band from offstage at the Menier to the Pinter pit and her understanding of Sondheim's composition is faultless. From brassy upbeat, to searing ironic agony, to the heavenly harmony that is Our Time, every note is explored to the full.

This is a show that's only here on a 12 week visit. As this review is published, the press are commenting that no West End show has ever garnered as many 5-star ratings (and lest Hecuba is accused of simply following the trend, this review's 5-star opinion was tweeted straight after curtain down on press night!). Merrily We Roll Along started out magnificent, and has simply become even better. Are there, or have there ever been, any other shows of this calibre? Damn few.


Runs to 27 July 2013

Picture: Tristram Kenton