Vincent O'Neill as Goldberg, Todd Benzin as Stanley and Josephine Hogan as Meg in "The Birthday Party."

(photo: Larry Roswell)

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY

Drama critics of my generation were weaned on the work of Harold Pinter. We read and discussed his plays before we had read Chekhov. Our teachers had come of age with Pinter and such contemporary British playwrights as John Osborne, Tom Stoppard and David Storey. The covers of the trade paperback versions of these plays were well familiar to us while we were still in our teens; as familiar as the cover of the original mass paperback edition of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf from the same era. We had yet to see a single production of any of these scripts, but we could recognize the face of Vivien Merchant a mile away. Scenes from these sparse works, the offspring of Eugene Ionesco and T. S. Eliot, were ubiquitous in acting classes. We were entirely comfortable with the prolonged pauses and the ambiguities in these plays, and aware that we were a experiencing a rebellion from a post-war drama in which realism reigned supreme.

In the years since, the pendulum of style has swung back in a more realistic direction and the work of Pinter, Storey and such are performed with surprising infrequency. A play like Pinter’s The Birthday Party, now being performed by the Irish Classical Theatre Company at the Andrews Theatre, may seem peculiar to many in today’s audience. It might be worthwhile, then, to offer a bit more background explanation than might typically be warranted. Pinter is actually quite accessible. His raw material comes from the everyday world that surrounds us all.

The Birthday Party takes place in a mundane world where, at any moment, something horrible may happen. Petey and Meg are a middle-aged couple running a seaside boarding house. The thrill of the day is the morning corn-flakes and suspense over the announcement of the fried bread. They have just one boarder, Stanley, a nearly silent and anti-social recluse who fascinates Meg, who tries to regulate his life with regular meals, hours and incessant chat. The perfectly unbearable order of this setting is disrupted when mysterious Mr. Goldberg and Mr. McCann arrive. They seem to know Stanley and to have dangerous intentions regarding him. Stanley is in a near panic when he learns that Meg has planned a birthday party for him, and that Goldberg and McCann are invited.

Because the form of the narrative is distinct but the content is incomplete, it’s all a bit less lucid than this description might suggest. Pinter plays on the clichés of daily living and on the predictability of dramatic narrative in ways that both propel the action and thwart its logic. The birthday party scene is built on the familiar pattern of a suspense thriller as Goldberg and McCann become increasingly and inexplicably menacing. The following morning, Meg is peculiarly unable to recall the dreadful details, remembering only her supreme position as belle of the ball. Lulu, the attractive party guest who is a pawn in both the suspense plot and an overly familiar seduction plot, appears to have been killed at the party, but makes an appearance the next morning, angered but unharmed. Revealing their vague intentions, Goldberg and McCann march the beaten-down Stanley off to see a man named “Monty,” who will, we presume, force him to conform to a new set of clichés. Petey protests, to no avail. Stanley seems unable to exert his own free will.

In addition to building suspense on well worn codes of dramatic action, Pinter builds comedy from the layering of cliché upon cliché. These add up to a linguistic tour de force. In addition, Pinter exhibits a disregard for logic worthy of Oscar Wilde, as for example, when Lulu protests that sexual secrets have been revealed to her of which a woman should be unaware until she has been married several times.

Under the direction of Greg Natale, the Irish Classical Theatre production is headed by Gerry Maher and Josephine Hogan as Petey and Meg, with Todd Benzin as Stanley. Leah Russo plays Lulu, with Vincent O’Neill as Goldberg and Guy Wagner as McCann. It is a highly capable cast and each actor clearly defines a nuanced character.

The production is highly successful at extracting humor from Pinter’s script, less successful at navigating any sense of danger or dread. The assurance that nothing seriously bad can happen is, usually, the hallmark of a comedy. Not so in Pinter. So much threat lies in the ambiguities. Is this truly a comedy after all? Might it not be that life in culture is farcical, but tragic? This question lies at the heart of the Pinteresque.

This Birthday Party favors moments of clarity and glosses over Pinter’s absurd but well-worn sequences of action and his famous gaps of silence, depriving the production of a certain poignancy. On the other hand, the production does move briskly and has the pace and drive of a tour de force. Moments are irresistible and the overall impact is very memorable, indeed. I apologize if that sounds ambiguous. The opportunity to see a high quality production of this play is a privilege.

STARTING HERE,

STARTING NOW

Mary Kate O’Connell has a special relationship to the work of David Shire, ever since she became close to his father, the late Buffalo band leader, Irv Shire. That friendship started when she produced the Shire and Maltby musical Baby! back in the 1980s, father told son, and now Mary Kate is practically part of the family. She champions Shire’s work whenever she can. (See next week’s Artvoice for a conversation with Shire about his upcoming January 27 concert with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, along with O’Connell).

Currently, O’Connell & Company is showcasing a popular 1970s Shire and Maltby revue, Starting Here, Starting Now. This is an appealing time capsule of a show, in which the singers explore modern relationships through a series of clever and insightful Shire and Maltby songs.

The songwriting team excels at the revue format, in part because each song is like a mini-play, complete with character, beginning, middle and end. Starting Here, Starting Now was originally written for three performers. Under the direction of Tom Doyle, O’Connell & Company has upped that number to seven, providing for more elaborate harmonies and staging. Doyle has done all of the expanded vocal arrangements as well, and these are excellent. The minimalist concept is maintained, and the open-hearted material, with its 1970s-love-conquers-all world-view, seems refreshingly sincere in its optimism layered with a kind of pre-AIDS, pre-9/11 knowingness that cannot approximate today’s cynicism.

Jack Greenan has provided some very smart choreography, which provides most of the spectacle in a show focused entirely on the performers. The cast is very young, boding well for the future of local musical theater. M. Yvette Bedgood, Colleen Marcello and Leah B. Schneider are very appealing. Jennifer Caruana, last seen in Reefer Madness at Alleyway Theatre, is especially charismatic. The men, Christopher Andreana, Casey Denton and Michael Tosha, provide strong vocals and great charm.

The material is sophisticated and witty. The expanded cast allows for stirring reinterpretations of such Shire and Maltby standards as “I Hear Bells” and “One Step.” Other favorites include “Beautiful,” “I Don’t Remember Christmas” and “The Girl of the Minute.”

O’Connell & Company has been on the upswing with recent shows, which seem less haphazardly casual and more proficiently polished than some of last season’s offerings. Perhaps it is the infusion of young talent. Perhaps it is the return to superior material. Whatever the reason, Starting Here, Starting Now is delightfully entertaining and smart.