Take a play by Harold Pinter and shape it into a production that resonates with an audience. That’s what director Richard Jones has done with The Birthday Party, with the help of a cast of six. Jane Horrocks, who plays Meg, tells Emma Clegg about the appeal of Pinter and how she connects with her stage character.
The plays of playwright, screenwriter, director, actor and 2005 Nobel-Prize winner Harold Pinter are not known for their uplifting narratives. That’s because there were no rose-tinted spectacles in place. Critic Irving Wardle used the term, “Comedies of Menace” to describe Pinter’s dramatic works, typically combining the ominous and humorous. “The essence of his singular appeal is that you sit down to every play in certain expectation of the unexpected”, says haroldpinter.org. Or in playwright David Hare’s words, “you never know what the hell’s coming next.”
Such summaries will strike a chord if you’ve ever encountered stage productions or screen adaptations of a Pinter play, which include over 30 plays from a career spanning more than 50 years.
Pinter himself described his works as an analysis of “the powerful and the powerless”, antithetical groupings that characterise so many of the confusions, injustices, vulnerabilities and inequalities within societies, communities, and households past and present.
This tussle of the powerful and powerless defines Pinter’s 1957 play, The Birthday Party, which is coming to the Ustinov Studio from 2-31 August, starring Jane Horrocks, Caolan Byrne, Carla Harrison-Hodge, John Marquez, Sam Swainsbury and Nicolas Tennant. The fact that it is directed by Olivier Award-winning director Richard Jones was instrumental in Jane Horrocks’ decision to take the role of Meg. Jane says, “I just love the work of Richard Jones – I’ve worked with him five times and I was intrigued to see what he would do with Pinter.
“Richard is very forensic in the way he works with the text, and the direction and the play are always the stars of the show. I think sometimes an audience come away seeing an actor as the star, but with Richard, who is such a beautiful storyteller, it’s the play, the production and how it’s staged that you are left with. It is quite tiring being in rehearsal with him because there is no stone unturned, and he’s relentless in his discovery of each line.”
Jane – best known for her role of the charming but dim fashionista Bubble in BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous and for the lead role in the stage play The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, which later became the film Little Voice – takes on the role of Meg in The Birthday Party. The action follows the story of Stanley, a guest in a seaside lodging house owned by couple Meg and Petey. Two unknown men appear for Stanley’s birthday party, and the story descends into Pinteresque disorientation, confusion and paranoia. The questions being asked are how do we exist in a world where nothing makes sense, nothing is clear and everyone is scarred by the past?
So given that confusion is inescapable, how is it possible to make the play read to the audience? “The challenge”, explains Jane, “is to find some sort of reality in the characters that you are playing. It’s a bit like Shakespeare, really – there are no back stories. What’s on the page is what’s on the page – there is no place for another back story, apart from what is implied. A lot of it is about creating an atmosphere and all the characters are very, very present all of the time. Nobody switches off – you are aware of what a character is doing at every given moment.
“Meg is an intriguing character because she comes from a different class – her father was a doctor – but there is also something a little on the spectrum about her, in that the script indicates that she wasn’t raised by her father and may have gone to a special school. So that’s what I’ve been bearing in mind in rehearsals. She’s not the brightest button, but there is something about her that loves domesticity and it seems that keeps her safe because she’s not felt safe in her younger life and she relies on her regular routine of breakfast and having food ready for Stanley and Petey. These are habitual things that she’s latched onto as safety measures for her survival.”
The attachment between Meg and the household’s lodger Stanley is a strong one: “She has found a deep love for Stanley – even though he is horrible and disrespectful towards her, she absolutely loves him. She is kind of in love with him really; he’s just the best thing in her life – her husband Petey is more like a rock, whereas Stanley is on a pedestal for Meg. Petey, too, has taken on a fatherly role towards Stanley, but it’s because he sees how much he means to Meg and they probably weren’t able to have children – so this childless couple invest all this energy into this ‘son’ that isn’t theirs.”
Many of Jane’s past roles have had strong comic elements, always enhanced by her broad Lancastrian accent – Bubble in Ab Fab (BBC/1992–2012), Fifi Forget-Me-Not in Fifi and the Flowertots (2005-2010), Julie in Trollied (Sky/2011-2018), and Babs in the film Chicken Run (2000). Will the character of Meg have the same comedy? Jane is guarded in her answer: “Well you never know the potential until an audience is there, and you see whether they laugh or not. There are definite comic parts to Meg in her innocence and slight lack of intelligence – but I don’t like to say that until the play is in front of an audience!”
Communication is another recurrent theme in Pinter’s work, and in this play. “Meg’s routine around the domestic world becomes her way of communicating. But it’s not communication, just repetition. Her husband understands that and he is also locked into the routine patter. The material for the two strangers, Goldberg and McCann, is very complex and wild but this uses the language of interrogation, breaking somebody down by repetition and confusion, rather than violence. It’s the language to disorientate and confuse where all sense of reality has been lost.”
The play follows the format of Absurdist Theatre of the 1950s and ’60s, exploring the existential and the illogical nature of the world. “This play does not have an easy story and nothing is explained”, says Jane. So Richard [Jones] in turn is not trying to explain what the play is about. That’s what you either like or don’t like about Pinter – the fact that you come away with a lot of questions, sometimes feeling quite bemused because it’s not a clear-cut story and so much is left to the audience’s imagination. Why is Stanley so tormented? Who are those two men? Why is Stanley afraid of them? It’s important not to overexplain a play like this. Creating answers is what it’s all about – that’s the whole point of Pinter.”
Main image: Sam Swainsbury, John Marquez, Jane Horrocks, Carla Harrison Hodge and Caolan Byrne in rehearsal. Photo: Foteini Christofilopoulou.
The Birthday Party, 2–31 August, Ustinov Studio, 7.30pm (Thurs and Sat 2.30pm). Tickets from £36.50; theatreroyal.org.uk.