✭✭✭✭✩<b>
by Harold Pinter, directed by Scott Moore</b><b>
Rhino Productions, Alumnae Studio Theatre, Toronto
September 9-18, 2004</b><b>
</b>
Rhino Productions has given Harold Pinter’s “The Birthday Party”, a classic of the Theatre of the Absurd, a low budget but well-acted production that shows the play is as intriguing now as it was when first produced in 1958.
We meet Meg and Petey Boles (Jane Elizabeth McGregor and Richard Trevor-Williams), who runs a boarding house where for a year Stanley (Martin McNenley) has been the only boarder. Meg’s determination to celebrate Stanley’s birthday, despite Stanley’s protests she has the wrong day, increase with the arrival of two mysterious men, Goldberg (Scott Moore) and McCann (Erik LeGendre). While Meg and local lass Lulu (Lil Malinich) hopelessly seek Stanley’s affection, the two men have sought out Stanley to bring him back to the “organization”. Why is Stanley’s past and name as uncertain as those of the two men? All that seems clear is that Stanley undergoes a rite of passage from an inert, isolated existence to forced conformity with a group that does not wish him well.
Scott Moore has directed a taut, straightforward production that allows the real to slip so gently into the surreal we hardly notice it happen. It’s a pity Moore had to step in, book in hand, for Rob Trick, who was to play Goldberg and thus distract from his carefully planned illusion. Even so he gives a fine performance. So do McNenley, who ably suggests hidden forces in the sullen nebbish Stanley, and McGregor, whose Meg is a delightful parody of domesticity with shades of doubt and madness playing over her smile.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in <i>Eye Weekly</i> 2004-09-16.
Photo: Martin McNenly. ©2004 David Leyes.
<b>2004-09-16</b>
<b>The Birthday Party</b>