2007<\/p>\n
The Birthday Party<\/p>\n
by Harold Pinter<\/p>\n
Flying Penguin Productions<\/p>\n
Queen\u2019s Theatre<\/p>\n
May 16.<\/p>\n
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n
A room is never a safe place with Harold Pinter. Once inside, you never know what confrontation might occur. But then again, there is also what might be waiting outside – when someone inevitably knocks at the door.\u00a0 Written in 1958,The Birthday Party<\/em> celebrates its fiftieth next year and David Mealor\u2019s brisk and engaging production at the Queens Theatre shows this is a text that still has plenty to give.<\/p>\n With Mary Moore\u2019s cleverly devised set, in pea soup green, there is enough naturalism for the gloomy Brighton boarding house as well as flexibility for performance in the round. Mealor\u2019s strong cast captures the grinding repetitions of habitual lives as Petey and Meg, like characters in an old BBC radio comedy, discuss the minutiae of cornflakes. But for their lodger, the lugubrious Stanley, things change when the sinister strangers, Goldberg and McCann, arrive.<\/p>\n Pinter\u2019s plays have been called comedies of menace and are notable for their excruciating pauses. Mealor\u2019s direction, encouraged by the accomplished English actor Gerrard McArthur\u2019s almost Meyerholdian version of Goldberg – played like a sinister marionnette, all arms and elbows, leering and yuk-yuks – finds a fluidity and humour in the text which doesn\u2019t\u00a0 compromise the necessary sense of paranoia and\u00a0 danger. Quentin Grant\u2019s accomplished piano \u2013 like Debussy for Buster Keaton – is evocative if very occasionally obtrusive, Mark Pennington\u2019s lighting and Andrew Howard\u2019s zany hyper-sound effects, for lighting matches and brushing shoes, add to the neurasthenia of it all.<\/p>\n The other performances –\u00a0 Rory Walker\u2019s psychologically obliterated Stanley, William Allert\u2019s creepy Irish zealot, Ksenja Logos, affecting as the betrayed Lulu, \u00a0Carmel Johnson\u2019s detail as the gormless Meg and Geoff Revell\u2019s understatement as Pete\u00a0 \u2013 are all excellent. After work such as Translations<\/em> previously, David\u00a0 Mealor\u2019s penguins are again flying with this production. This is a fine example of what local talent can achieve. With work of this calibre the company deserves a more permanent habitat.<\/p>\n \u201cSomething to Celebrate\u201d (The Birthday Party) The Adelaide Review, <\/em> No. 317, May 25, 2007, p.19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 2007 The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter Flying Penguin Productions Queen\u2019s Theatre May 16. Reviewed by Murray Bramwell A room is never a safe place with Harold Pinter. Once inside, you never know what confrontation might occur. But then again, there is also what might be waiting outside – when someone inevitably knocks at the door.\u00a0 Written in 1958,The Birthday Party celebrates its fiftieth next year and David Mealor\u2019s brisk and engaging production at the Queens Theatre shows this is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,5,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adelaide-companies","category-archive","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}