It was famously savaged by theatre critics who dismissed it as “puzzling” and “half-gibberish”, and pitied a cast forced to “struggle valiantly” to give it life. By the time the only rave review came out, the production had already been shut down. Sixty years after that disastrous London premiere, The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter, now recognised as a classic, is receiving a starry revival.
Toby Jones, Zoë Wanamaker and Stephen Mangan will appear in a 2018 West End production at, appropriately enough, the Harold Pinter theatre (renamed for the Nobel prize-winning playwright after his death in 2008).
It will be produced by Sonia Friedman and directed by Ian Rickson who together have previously collaborated on three Pinter productions including Betrayal starring Kristin Scott Thomas in 2011. Rickson directed the late playwright in his final appearance as an actor, in Krapp’s Last Tape by Samuel Beckett in 2006.
“Doing The Birthday Party is particularly thrilling because, like any first major play, it has the intense DNA of a writer’s inner life; their yearnings, their obsessions, their longings,” said Rickson. “There’s something about The Birthday Party in particular that’s so raw and committed – it has this kind of anarchic, punk spirit.”
Jones, who last year starred in a Radio 3 drama of The Birthday Party, will play Stanley, a lodger at a seaside boarding house run by Meg (Wanamaker). Mangan is one of the strangers whose arrival sends shock waves through the house.
The Birthday Party opens for previews on 9 January at the Harold Pinter theatre, London, and runs until 14 April 2018.
