Theater Reviews

Jul 19, 2007 - Harold Pinter's "The Birthday Party" - a bleak, but triumphant celebration at Bruka

By jack neal

Harold Pinter’s play, the non-celebratory “The Birthday Party” at Reno’s Bruka Theater, is both dazzling and confusing. It’s a terrific production that dazzles. It’s also a deeply ambiguous play that confuses.

Celebrated playwright Pinter knows how to play jokes on actors and audiences. He writes plays that entertain with absurdist wit, while they go no where in the philosophy and plot departments.

Or maybe they do!

The confusion over which is true, meaning or meaninglessness, may be the point. Or is it? The gospel of life according Pinter just may be that existence “is” absurd and life really means nothing, except for the moment – whatever “the moment” is?

The Bruka Theatre Company is presenting “The Birthday Party” as part of this year’s Reno is Artown Festival. Pinter’s plays are bleak. But this time something happened on the way bleakness, the trip is not just provocative, it’s entertaining – making this successful-as-entertainment “The Birthday Party” a triumph for director Tom Plunkett. But Plunkett’s take does more; it strikes gold as a production that evokes not just puzzlement but thought about reality, surrealism and the elusiveness of existence itself.

The group of six who one-way-or-another inhabit Meg and Petey’s house (is it or is it not a boarding house) are oblivious to reality. Meg is lovably daffy. Petey is laughably serene. Stanley, the boarder, is seductively disturbed. Lulu is, presumably (the audience doesn’t know for sure), seductively seduced. Goldberg and McCann are two weirdos who arrive late and talk about such things as “the organization” - an “organization” in Pinter’s macabre game of human chess never explained.

The destruction of Stanley is the Goldberg-McCann game. Who are these two men who emerge from no where, then depart for no where with no apparent or implied motive for their behavior? Into this mix steps Lulu who appears used by Goldberg, then discarded into the trash heap of exploitation. What a guy!

Holly Natwora plays Meg as a tragically laughable Edith Bunker and she’s superb every moment she’s on stage. Playing Meg’s significant other (or is he?) is the subtle and convincing Jorge Hoyos. Apparently numbed by life and Meg, Hoyos is a stoic Petey. As Stanley, Michael Maupin resists overt histrionics portraying Stanley’s decline to no where affectingly.

As Lulu, Jamie Plunkett implodes with impressive restraint once more with feeling. David Richards brings the kind of sweet-thing presence to his sweeping portrait of the menacing Goldberg, Anthony Hopkins displayed in “The Silence of the Lambs.” He’s sadistic and riveting. As McCann, Androo Allen is the perfect thug.

Lewis Zaumeyer’s evocative set, a tacky seaside-house interior, David Simpson’s highly effective lighting and all other production values are first-rate.

“The Birthday Party” can be seen at the Bruka Theatre, 99 North Virginia Street, Reno, Nevada, July 6, 7, 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21, 26, 27 and 28 (2007), at 8 p.m. and July 22 (2007) at 2 p.m. Tickets are $16 ($14 for students and seniors) in advance and $20 at the door. For information call 775-323-3221 or go online at bruka,org.