THE BIRTHDAY PARTY

Two of the Bay Area’s finest actors, James Carpenter and Julian Lopez Morillas, currently star in Harold Pinter’s THE BIRTHDAY PARTY at the Aurora Theater in Berkeley. This early Pinter work, circa 1957, is a must see for anyone attempting to attend, in one lifetime, the top 100 plays of the present kalpa.

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY embraces many ideas. Whether such ideas were borrowed directly from other sources or they were part of the collective consciousness in which Pinter was immersed is up to the pundits, mavens, scholars and high school English teachers to decide.

Two thugs, Goldberg (played by Julian Lopez-Morillas) and McCann (played by Michael Ray Wisely), were admittedly patterned after Hemingway’s murderers in his short story: THE KILLERS. Meg and Stanley were derived from Pinter’s seminal, salad, or halcyon days as an actor in 1954. Pinter had obviously made that bold precarious leap of faith or arrogance that few actors dare: he gave up his daytime job for the stage. For his hubris, he was holed up in Eastbourne boarding house with an overbearing landlady (is there any other type?) and her solitary lodger. The Eastbourne landlady was reincarnated into Pinter’s Meg (played by Phoebe Moyer). Meg is a middle aged woman, who has cast aside moral pretenses and is trying desperately, trysting with Stanley no less, to muster a modicum of joie de vivre—not easy considering she is entrenched in a perfectly wretched life married to Petey (played by Chris Ayes). Petey is an arranger and leasing agent for deck chairs. The solitary lodger of the Eastbourne flophouse, a concert pianist, who no longer played the piano, serves as the raw material for Pinter’s character Stanley (played by James Carpenter).

Much of Pinter’s past is tossed into THE BIRTHDAY PARTY. Pinter lived through the London Blitz: each night he sat in total darkness awaiting new craters to be formed in the London landscape by Dorniers, Heinkels and Junkers. To pass the time in the blackout Pinter played Blind Man’s Bluff: a sexually charged game of suspense in inky darkness. Pinter recreates the excitement of the darkness at Stanley’s birthday party.

Pinter is a master of suspense achieved by subtlety and ambiguity. Stanley in many ways is similar to Kafka’s Josef K, who, for reasons purposely left uncertain, is pursued by two men. The men, rather than abducting Stanley immediately, throw a bizarre birthday party for him. Stanley’s sin is to have left some hazy organization, abandoned some mission in his past much like Jonah did when he abrogated his responsibility to Nineveh. Perhaps Pinter is revisiting the decision he made in 1948 to dodge National Service during the Berlin Airlift and apply for conscientious objector status. Pinter points to one line in THE BIRTHDAY PARTY as the crux of the play: “Stan, don’t let them tell you what to do!” The admonition is a call for personal autonomy above all. We may never know what club Pinter alludes to when he tells a critic that his play is about, “ . . . the socio-religious monster (that) arrives to effect alteration and censure upon a member of the club who has discarded responsibility . . . “ but it is interesting to speculate.

If you eschew prosaic linearity and the strictures of literality, then this play is for you: it provides room to breath, space to reflect and leaves the jury i.e. the audience, in endless deliberation. As a British Critic with foresight predicted nearly 50 years ago, THE BIRTHDAY PARTY is “wonderful and would be heard from for years to come.” For tickets, call the Aurora Box Office at 510 843-4822 or visit www.auroratheatre.org and enjoy.

Jeffrey R Smith
U.S. Naval Aviator and Lieutenant Commander Retired
Math Teacher at Encinal High School A.U.S.D.
San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
Sidewalk Politician and Arm Chair Liberal