Preview: 'The Birthday Party' Irish Summer 2016 Tour

Declan Rodgers as McCann & Jonathon Ashleet as Goldberg

There is something about the title that makes it feel familiar. As well as the writer's name: Harold Pinter, a writer, director and actor who wrote for theatre, film and TV, and he received a number of awards including the Nobel Price for Literature in 2005, and someone who wasn't afraid to voice his political opinions as well. Since its opening in 1958, seen as his break through, and first full length, play, despite the reviews it initally received, it is now seen by many as a modern classic, and has been revived many times. The latest production of this play will be making its way around Irish theatres before playing in The Gaiety Theatre, Dublin. With that in mind, I managed to have a quick chat with Declan Rodgers about the play itself, his role in it and the prospect of bringing this production to Irish audiences. 

"It's set in a boarding house in a coastel town, resort, in England back in the '50s," Rodger's tells me, responding to my 'What's it about?' question. Rodger's himself hails from Co. Down "The boarding house is run by two characters called Petey and Meg," an elderly couple who run the house, "and there's a resident within the boarding house called Stanley. He's been there for a year or so - a proper resident - and one day these two characters turn up at the door looking for Stanley and you can tell immediately that they have ill intentions towards him, and you don't know why they are there, or you don't know why they are after him, and you don't know where they come from." 

The arrival of the two men, Goldberg and McCann, are a welcome distraction for Petey and Meg and their empty boarding house, save for Stanley. But when an impromptu birthday party turns into a game of cat and mouse, it goes into a "dark spiral downwards from there," Rodgers adds. 

Rodger's plays McCann, "I'm like Goldberg's right hand man," Rodgers tells me in describing the character he plays. "He's quite menacing, he has a physical presence, and he kind of does the dirty work of Goldberg." Rodger's likens them to the two hitmen in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. For Rodger's the background of the two men are quite vague, which makes the part intriguing to play, allowing the actor to make sense of it himself. "I take the information out of that and make decisions upon where my character is from, why I'm there, do I want to be there, what I'm doing there."

Gareth Bennett-Ryan as Stanley, Cheryl Kennedy as Meg

For this production, directed by Michael Cabot, presented by London Classical Theatre, who are no strangers to Pinter (and a company that receive zero public subsidies) having previously produced The Caretaker, Old Times and Betrayel, and the reception has been - "It's great. Really good. There's been glowing reviews across the board" including one four and a half star review, which is a bit of a first for Rodgers, something he finds odd in a funny kind of why, receiving four and five star reviews, but never the mid-way point before. "The audiences are loving it," he adds, even having a few Q&A sessions afterwords and hearing audiences' reactions to it directly, some wondering what it is all about, reminding me of what David Hare remarked of Pinter plays in a book about Pinter, that "the essence of his singular appeal is that you sit down to every play he writes in certain expectation of the unexpected." Or as he sums it up a line later: "you never know what the hell's coming next." Perhaps that is the main appeal of the play is that it invokes our love of the mysterious and the unknown, allowing us to take what we will from it. 

In May Irish audiences will be able to catch a glimpse of Rodger's in The Birthday Party. And what are his feelings about coming to Ireland with it? "I can't wait. I've never played The Everyman in Cork. I've never played The Gaiety in Dublin. I've never played Coleraine Riverside, I've never played The Market Place, Armagh. I haven't played any of the venues randomly, and I can't wait because the last time I was in Cork it must have been about fifteen years ago, more probably, twenty years ago. So I can't wait to get down there, that will be good craic. I love Dublin, so I can't wait to go there, I have friends down there, connections and stuff, so they'll obviously come to the show, and it's just a great city. We're there for a week in The Gaiety, which is lovely." 

It is interesting to note that in his acting days, Pinter toured Ireland for nearly two years, between 1951 and 1952, as part of the Anew McMaster Repertory Company, that included Cork, although on that occasion it seems to have been the Cork Opera House. Now, many years later, it is his own work that is touring, with other actors bringing it to Cork and beyond. A Pinter play is always a curious thing, and this production is another chance to see why.



Photos: Sheila Burnett