"The Birthday Party". Burton Taylor Studio
You know you’ve witnessed a really special show if you get home afterwards and you’re still speaking like the characters. That's what happened to me this evening after seeing Postbox Productions’ debut play, The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter. ‘How was the play?’, asked The President. ‘What's the point in talking? A great production’, I replied, unable to shake off the cadences of Nate Goldberg, the charmingly terrifying, underworld-adjacent figure who arrives at Meg and Petey’s boarding house (‘It’s on the list!’) to steal away their one resident, Stanley. The Birthday Party may have been Pinter’s first play, but I'm not sure he ever wrote a better one. He was in at the ground floor with the Theatre of Hate, and every element was already polished to menacing perfection. As the denizens of the tawdry little beachfront B&B circle each other, the weight of an incomprehensible, cosmic threat descends around their humdrum lives. It’s never clear exactly what Stanley may ...