THEATRE / What's it all about?

: Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party opened in London one day in 1958 and closed six days later, conferring cult status on a work now recognised as a classic of modern theatre. Here an actor from the original production and others from subsequent revivals recall their involvement with the play and its author
At that time no one knew who Pinter was. He'd had only had a couple of one-act plays on. His career was as an actor, under the name David Barron. I wasn't all that keen to do it. To be honest, I didn't understand it. I'd been doing tours of pretty standard fare and, quite frankly, I didn't think I was right for the part. It was my agent who persuaded me and I'm glad he did - not just because I got other work from it. We were mystified at first. A great deal of rehearsal time was taken up with, 'What the hell does this mean?' and we were puzzled by the word patterns. But we very soon realised there was an electric quality about it. We became awfully caught up in it. I remember asking just what it was that my character was supposed to be frightened of? And Pinter simply said, 'Anything that frightens you, Richard Pearson.' He didn't dish out praise very often, but when he did, it was worth it. After three weeks' rehearsal at the Garrick, we opened at the Cambridge Arts Theatre. By that time we were all very fond of the play, which doesn't always happen, I have to say. The notices came out and said things like 'this man's a great discovery'. We then toured to Wolverhampton, who didn't like it, and Oxford, who did. The opening night at the Lyric Hammersmith was very cheery but the London critics massacred it.

During our week-long run, Kenneth Williams came. He was wildly enthusiastic and said that Pinter was clearly destined for great things. But the houses were dreadful, and we had to fill the place with free seats for drama students. It wasn't just the play. We all got panned. Of course, when the RSC revived it, the same critics all said it wasn't a patch on the original. JANET SUZMAN: Lulu in Harold Pinter's production for the RSC in 1964 My abiding memory is that Glenda Jackson was my understudy and that she was much better than me. I arrived at rehearsals one morning with a throat infection and couldn't speak. So, with enormous trepidation, I withdrew and let Glenda take over. When I returned the next day, everyone was horribly over-polite and I knew immediately that she had been wonderful. Working with Pinter as author and director was very exciting but I think we were a little too biddable. Sitting down at the first read-through I thought, 'God is here. He will tell us what it is all about.' But of course he absented himself from any such responsibility. He assumed this enormous innocence. He just said, 'I know no more than you do.' Mind you, if we had known exactly, it would have stopped us in our tracks. Pinter was punctilious about the text, especially the punctuation. There's a scene where Meg is talking about Stanley's breakfast, and Doris Hare ran the line straight through. 'Please go back,' he said, 'and separate it out: 'But he doesn't deserve any, does he, Petey? / Now you eat up those cornflakes like a good boy. / Go on.' ' What that does is inject that inimitable vague threat into the mundane. You can't miss it. You bump your shins against it. Lots of people couldn't stand it, but rather that than indifference. Others were surprised that they weren't bored by it, but then the amount of sheer wattage on that stage was remarkable. His observation was so acute. He had ingested so many of the small dark vagaries of English life and we were a very inventive cast. Except me. Secretly, I would have loved a career playing girls like Lulu, but I wasn't cut out for it. BRYAN PRINGLE: Stanley in Pinter's 1964 production for the RSC I remember it as being about words, words, words. Harold directed it and as far I was concerned it was about getting it perfect. Maybe the words seem random, but in fact they're very precise. Stanley is a wonderful part and it was a pleasure to work with a director who knew the play so well. I can't explain it. It was just a joyous time.

By the time we did the play, Harold was a big name. We rehearsed for ages, which sounds dreadful, but was actually great fun. It wasn't simply a question of struggling to find the meaning. Harold wouldn't have told us what it was about anyway. We took it all at face value. He just told us to be truthful and the text would play itself. And of course, he was right. I do remember him being a stickler about clothing, though. It all had to be correct. I had this beautiful suit made for me. He even had to come over and check my shoes. It was a great company. As well as Janet, we had Newton Blick as Petey, Doris Hare as Meg and Brewster Mason as Goldberg. McCann was played by Patrick Magee who was an old friend of Harold's. They had toured Ireland together doing Shakespeare and Wilde with Anew McMaster who was an old-school eccentric actor-manager. He knew all those places McCann talks about. He really was menacing. At the opening of Act Two he sits at the table slowly tearing a newspaper. Watching him tear that paper every night scared me to death. No one ever remembers how funny the play is. There was one particular performance where we played in front of four drama schools. They had all studied the play and they laughed and laughed. And you know what? The pauses covered the laughs. Mind you, he was an actor who knew his craft, so we shouldn't have been surprised. PETER WHITMAN: Goldberg in Nancy Meckler's 1991 production for Shared Experience From the moment it starts the play is all about a naked jockeying for power. It's not the cool, cerebral stuff that people think. There's raw red meat being chewed on that stage. It's also political. It's about fascism, the need to dominate and the response to it. McCann partly represents the stifling power of religion; Goldberg, the family. Why call him Goldberg if not to draw attention to his Judaism? Pinter grew up under the threat of occupation. He's this bright Jewish kid who knows that, with a little invasion, he's dead. I suggested to Pinter that his writing is always political, and he said that was fair. It's a play in which weak people, good people, watch somebody being destroyed. After playing it for five months it gets to you and affects your feelings for others in the company. You get tense. For an actor there's a huge amount to mine; great speeches and set pieces. Not everyone likes watching it, though. Some friends had to be persuaded to come and even then they sat there bored. All these years on, they're still asking, 'What's going on? Why are those characters there?'

Pinter came to Cardiff to see us. I was unbelievably scared. Not only was he the playwright, but he'd directed past productions and played my role. On top of all that, he had been a hero of mine when I was at University. There was a whole group of us who did all that early work. He couldn't have been nicer. He took us all out to supper and gave us constructive notes. Then he turned to me and said, 'How would you like a new line? At the end of Act One, when Goldberg goes off with Meg, look up and say, 'What a lovely flight of stairs.' Let's see if it gets a laugh.'