THERE are birthday parties – cakes, frocks, candles, music, dancing … And then there is Harold Pinter’s Birthday Party. It’s Pinter – so you know the atmosphere will not be the usual jolly fun! Bath Theatre Royal’s Ustinov studio hosts a new production of this famous play, running to 31st August, and starring Jane Horrocks and John Marquez.
The Birthday Party, which had its premiere in 1958, is directed by five-times Olivier Award-winner Richard Jones, who returns to the Ustinov Studio following last year’s phenomenally acclaimed Machinal, which transferred to London’s Old Vic Theatre earlier this year.
The play is a classic Pinter drama, described as a compelling and intriguing comedy of menace, It is set in a rundown seaside boarding house, where what should have been an innocent party for unemployed pianist Stanley (the only guest at Meg and Petey’s guest house), is turned upside down when two strangers arrive.
When the deeply sinister Goldberg and McCann arrive to celebrate his birthday party, the door is thrown open to the stuff of nightmares. Everyone becomes caught in the unpreedictable web of Stanley’s peculiar birthday party.
Jane Horrocks, who stars as Meg, is an Olivier Award, Golden Globe Award and BAFTA nominee for her work on stage and screen. Her stellar career has included roles ranging from Bubble in Absolutely Fabulous to Ros Pritchard in The Amazing Mrs Pritchard. She starred as Nicola in Mike Leigh’s film Life is Sweet, Miss Irvine in The Witches and LV in Little Voice, a role she also played to huge critical acclaim at the National Theatre and in the West End in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice.
John Marquez, who plays Goldberg, has performed at the Theatre Royal Bath previously in The Taming of the Shrew in 2012 and Boeing Boeing in 2009. West End appearances include Opening Night, Privates On Parade and The Anniversary, as well as productions at the Old Vic, the Almeida Theatre, Young Vic, Royal Court, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, National Theatre, RSC and Chichester Festival Theatre.
The cast is completed by Caolan Byrne as McCann, Carla Harrison-Hodge as Lulu, Sam Swainsbury as Stanley and Nicolas Tennant as Petey.
Filled with hilarity and menace, the mundane and the absurd, The Birthday Party launched Pinter as one of the most significant contemporary British dramatists and was his first full length play. The production is part of the Deborah Warner Season at the Ustinov Studio.
Rehearsal photos by Foteini Christofilopoulou.