MENACE is one of those things for which delicate audience members now need a trigger warning, but back in 1957, when one-time actor and burgeoning playwright David Baron/Harold Pinter started to craft his oeuvre, it was something he all but introduced to the English stage.

Sheer terror is commonplace on television and film, but on stage it takes subtle acting and incisive direction to achieve its full potential and in The Birthday Party, Pinter had it just right. Open to many interpretations, it is a play that can alter radically between productions. Pinter’s other USP, the one that spawned the word Pinteresque, was his liberal use of long pauses and absurd non sequiturs in dialogue.

I had never seen a wholly satisfying production of the play … until now. Richard Jones’ new production at the Ustinov has the astonishing Jane Horrocks at its heart. That menace creeps in, past the broad comedy and nervy edginess. The set, designed, as are the costumes, by Ultz, captures the dingy, run-down seaside boarding house where Meg and Petey play host to long-term resident Stanley. The “curtain” separating the audience from the action has a large window in the centre, from which deckchair attendant Petey suspiciously surveys the world outside. Inside all is as usual. His wife provides the same breakfast as she always does, and the same words to accompany it. The ritual is performed. Former pier pianist Stanley comes downstairs. Petey goes to work. Naughty allusions are shared between the landlady and her lodger. A woman appears, unsuccessfully inviting Stanley to venture outside.

Two men arrive, in suits. One is a twitchy Irishman, and other a suave Jew. Who are they? Why are they here? When Meg announces, erroneously, that it is Stanley’s birthday, the men suggest a party.  There’s a back story, but we are not quite sure what it is. The menace is ramping up.

The director and his brilliant actors have incisively shown that every miniscule movement (directed by Aletta Collins), every silence and every word is freighted with meaning.

Nicholas Tennant finds a nervous and caring real person in Petey, often just a make-weight in this play. Sam Swainsbury captures the terrified conflict in Stanley, and Carla Harrison-Hodge embodies the pseudo-sophistication of inexperienced young women. John Marquez’s smarmy Goldberg and Caolan Byrne’s brutish and twitching McCann are masters of the art of deception.

The magnetic Jane Horrocks has re-created Meg, a living 1950s period piece whose existence is confined by repeated words and actions, day after day after day, and whose slightly suspect warm feelings for her lodger and the chance of a party in a beloved old frock bring light to her tired eyes. She is full of high anxiety gleefulness. She is simply mesmerising, and her performance is worth the price of the ticket, the difficulty of finding your way round Bath, the parking and the road closures that surround the city.

GP-W

Photographs by Foteini Christofilopoulou