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Theatre & Box Office |
Reprinted with permission of The Post Tribune. Pinter's 'Birthday Party' packs a powerful punch Harold Pinter’s first play is also one of his most psychologically jarring dramas. Chicago Street Theatre presents “The Birthday Party,” a spare, gripping drama, beginning tonight in Valparaiso. In this story, Stanley, a recluse, hides from his past in a boarding house on the English seacoast. Two brutish strangers, McCann and Goldberg, catch up with Stanley, and proceed to mentally tear him down. Since the audience is left to guess Stanley’s secrets, the play is less about Stanley’s “past” and more about our discomfort with our own flaws and secrets. Co-directors Deb Weiss and Stan Christianson feel this is the ultimate human drama — a play that has the audience feeling trapped and desperate with the characters. There is even a moment when the lights black out, and the audience feels a sense of panic. “This is a play I have loved for years and wanted to do ever since I came to this theater and realized this was a theater that could do Pinter,” Weiss says. “It’s a thriller without explanation, so that makes it absurdist. It also has a huge psychological component. Pinter has painted this huge ink blot and asked the audience to look at it and figure out what it means.” Weiss says there are many layers to this intricate drama, and that makes it fascinating to dissect. She feels the play, originally performed in London in 1958, could have been Pinter’s reflections on his own vulnerabilities as a Jewish man. “Pinter grew up in a world where everything can appear safe and normal, but in an instant, the world can turn upside down,” Weiss says. “Pinter wrote the play after the Holocaust, and the fact he was Jewish must have been in the back of his mind. “Pinter says, we live on the edge of disaster, and if there is something in your past, it will catch up with you,” Weiss says. “You can hide in a little boarding house by the sea, but you can’t get away.” Christianson says Pinter draws you right into the claustrophobic world of his characters without explaining everything to you. “He’s never come up with Cliff Note explanations of what he did with this play,” Christianson says. “It’s not a set piece. You don’t know who the white hats are and who the black hats are, and you don’t really know where it’s going, but our audiences are used to seeing us do edgy, interesting plays.” Christianson says the story takes a savage twist when two strangers show up in the middle of a birthday celebration for Stanley to interrogate, humiliate and shake him down. Are they the Gestapo? Is Stanley in trouble with the law? Does he owe the mob money? During the chilling scene, Meg and Petey helplessly watch as their boarder is reduced to gibberish and taken away by the creepy strangers. “It goes from a leisurely narrative to a boom, boom, boom staccato rhythm,” Weiss says. “It’s fast-paced. There are funny moments and moments of terrifying intensity. You see characters sadly attempt to make connections, but you know the connections aren’t working.” Weiss says the challenge is to help the actors deliver Pinter’s brutally fast rhythms and still maintain the story’s suspense. The cast of veteran actors have performed together in many Chicago Street productions. The ensemble includes John Evans (Stanley), David Pera (Goldberg), Eric Brant (McCann), Piper Bakrevski (Meg) and Ron Shurte (Petey). “What I like about this play, is how deep inside themselves the actors have to reach,” Weiss says. “We’ve had to go back, fine-tune and do certain scenes over and over again. All of the actors have a willingness to push beyond their comfort zone.” Weiss says Pinter packs a powerful punch with his intriguing tale of human misery. “When it was first released in London, people didn’t understand it,” Weiss says. “It almost works better today. We live in a world that is used to questions that don’t get answered. Pinter tortures us, but he does it, with words. It’s one wild ride!” If you go |
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