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Post by Deleted on Jan 14, 2018 14:16:46 GMT
It is all well trying to tell me how it makes sense but I just feel Pinter is really pretentious and only 'intellectual ' people get it and if you don't you are just dumb. This is a bit like Stoppard and feels elitist to me and that is not what I think theatre should be. When I was leaving I got the feeling and heard lots of people didn't get it and no one seemed to really love it.
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Post by lynette on Jan 14, 2018 14:25:12 GMT
Stoppard is elitist. He expects you know Hamlet back to front and also about Lenin and loads of other stuff. All very intellectuall party games. His best plays are not like that though. Arcadia is ok in that you don’t need to know a thing. He explains it all. But Pinter is not elitist, he is writing about a birthday party, a caretaker, a bloke taking his girl home for the first time, a marriage break up..all very ordinary stuff which he makes into something ok, weird, but certainly not ordinary.
I haven seen this production so possibly they are making it a bit weighty, I can’t say.
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Post by crowblack on Jan 14, 2018 14:59:24 GMT
I dunno - I saw this yesterday, having not seen it since I was a teenager, and it really felt like a period piece, a play from the mid 20thc whose reference points are even earlier (Kafka, or the rundown, menacing seaside stories of Graham Greene or Patrick Hamilton). Perhaps they are being too reverent, but I felt it needed some vim. Frankly, I think most episodes of Inside Number 9 knock the socks off Pinter - and have the ability to leave me in tears, feeling sick, or wanting to wash my brain out, which I've never got from Pinter.
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Post by lynette on Jan 14, 2018 15:07:10 GMT
Agree, Inside No 9 brilliant. Couldn't have happened without Pinter.... I’m also thinking, having seen that docu on Palin the other day, that Monty Python is simply the flip side of Pinter.
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Post by crowblack on Jan 14, 2018 16:09:33 GMT
Couldn't have happened without Pinter.... Probably not - he was such a fixture on the school curriculum for our generation, but Pinter couldn't have happened without Beckett, Genet etc. There's such an engaging three-dimensionality, a depth and humanity in the League/Inside No 9's work missing from Pinter or their contemporaries like Charlie Brooker.
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Post by lynette on Jan 14, 2018 17:04:36 GMT
Yep. I’m just wondering what that emoji is doing in my text. I didn’t put it there. One of Pinter's little tricks ....
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Post by mallardo on Jan 14, 2018 17:16:23 GMT
Is expecting a certain level of intelligence from your audience elitist? Every playwright worth his/her salt expects that. Stoppard is not elitist - and neither is Pinter.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 14, 2018 17:24:11 GMT
Is expecting a certain level of intelligence from your audience elitist? Every playwright worth his salt expects that. Stoppard is not elitist - and neither is Pinter. I think the problem people have is more the cultural expectations attached to these playwrights, rather than the plays themselves. So people think if they don't "get" or "like" Pinter they're being called "stupid" because every "intellectual" out there tells them so. Same with Shakespeare or Sondheim, because they're so 'elevated' as cultural bastions, people feel like they must be stupid or defective in their taste if it doesn't appeal. Whereas to use the above example, if someone says 'I don't like Inside Number 9' mostly people shrug and say 'Fair enough it's not your taste'* *this doesn't apply if you say you don't like Game of Thrones, in which case people think you're a freak who lives under a rock
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Post by Deleted on Jan 14, 2018 18:07:22 GMT
Is expecting a certain level of intelligence from your audience elitist? Every playwright worth his salt expects that. Stoppard is not elitist - and neither is Pinter. I think the problem people have is more the cultural expectations attached to these playwrights, rather than the plays themselves. So people think if they don't "get" or "like" Pinter they're being called "stupid" because every "intellectual" out there tells them so. Same with Shakespeare or Sondheim, because they're so 'elevated' as cultural bastions, people feel like they must be stupid or defective in their taste if it doesn't appeal. Whereas to use the above example, if someone says 'I don't like Inside Number 9' mostly people shrug and say 'Fair enough it's not your taste'* *this doesn't apply if you say you don't like Game of Thrones, in which case people think you're a freak who lives under a rock I have never seen GoT so what does that make me?
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Post by Deleted on Jan 14, 2018 18:32:16 GMT
I like Pinter and I would have liked to see this play. On the subject of “getting” a play: one of the reasons I like to go to the theatre alone is so that I don’t have to have a conversation straight after seeing a play about what it “means”. I think some plays require a different way of seeing or thinking. You can just experience them. You don’t always have to work them out. I hate going to the theatre with people who know everything about everything. It can sometimes close things down for me and my mind stops exploring the performance in any meaningful way.
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Post by lynette on Jan 14, 2018 23:24:34 GMT
Is expecting a certain level of intelligence from your audience elitist? Every playwright worth his/her salt expects that. Stoppard is not elitist - and neither is Pinter. I agree, Pinter certainly not elitist. In fact some of his work is almost music hall. But Stoppard does expect a lot, except as I said in his best plays which I think are Arcadia and The Invention of Love. NT programmes always useful for Stoppard. In real life , however, Pinter was the one who almost refused to sign my text until his companions obviously expected him to whereas Stoppard, who was in a hurry, graciously waited for me to get a pen that would write properly! In my opinion Pinter became self important but Stoppard hasn’t. Just my opinion.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2018 9:12:45 GMT
Is expecting a certain level of intelligence from your audience elitist? Every playwright worth his/her salt expects that. Stoppard is not elitist - and neither is Pinter. I agree, Pinter certainly not elitist. In fact some of his work is almost music hall. But Stoppard does expect a lot, except as I said in his best plays which I think are Arcadia and The Invention of Love. NT programmes always useful for Stoppard. In real life , however, Pinter was the one who almost refused to sign my text until his companions obviously expected him to whereas Stoppard, who was in a hurry, graciously waited for me to get a pen that would write properly! In my opinion Pinter became self important but Stoppard hasn’t. Just my opinion. I suspect most writers are a tad self important. Even Caryl Churchill who doesn’t do publicity for her plays... one might say that it is because she is refusing fame etc but not doing publicity creates a mystery which in turn leads to a different kind of personality cult.
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Post by crowblack on Jan 15, 2018 9:35:47 GMT
In my opinion Pinter became self important but Stoppard hasn’t. Just my opinion. Back in the late 50s or early 60s, so only at the start of his career, Pinter kicked my young uncle off a production of one of his plays (Questors theatre group, I think) because he asked questions about the text. I've never got the impression that Pinter was a pleasant human being.
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Post by Honoured Guest on Jan 15, 2018 10:07:16 GMT
Never work with children, animals or such young uncles.
Go Harold!
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Post by zahidf on Jan 15, 2018 10:08:34 GMT
Got a rush ticket for today
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Post by bordeaux on Jan 15, 2018 11:48:10 GMT
I'm not sure the word 'elitist' is helpful as it means different things to different people. Both Pinter and Stoppard have written works which are hard to understand in ways that, say, a David Hare or Alan Bennett play aren't. Pinter's plays can be oblique; you are sometimes not sure who the characters are, what their relationship is, whether they are real, what they are talking about. Mysteries are not cleared up, there is often no plot, things are left hanging; the world on stage bears some relation to the real world but it's not wholly recognisable. That makes some of them difficult, but is difficulty the same as elitist? Some of Stoppard's plays are hard to understand if you don't have the requisite general knowledge, though some exaggerate the difficulty in my view; you can still enjoy them without getting every allusion (like Shakespeare). I agree Travesties contains a lot of references to things not everyone knows about, but Arcadia actually teaches you about the difficult stuff you need to understand to get the play. Far from being elitist, it is showing us that difficult concepts can be understood by a lot of people.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2018 13:53:35 GMT
I'm not sure the word 'elitist' is helpful as it means different things to different people. Both Pinter and Stoppard have written works which are hard to understand in ways that, say, a David Hare or Alan Bennett play aren't. Pinter's plays can be oblique; you are sometimes not sure who the characters are, what their relationship is, whether they are real, what they are talking about. Mysteries are not cleared up, there is often no plot, things are left hanging; the world on stage bears some relation to the real world but it's not wholly recognisable. That makes some of them difficult, but is difficulty the same as elitist? Some of Stoppard's plays are hard to understand if you don't have the requisite general knowledge, though some exaggerate the difficulty in my view; you can still enjoy them without getting every allusion (like Shakespeare). I agree Travesties contains a lot of references to things not everyone knows about, but Arcadia actually teaches you about the difficult stuff you need to understand to get the play. Far from being elitist, it is showing us that difficult concepts can be understood by a lot of people. I read an interview once where Stoppard said that people think of him as clever, but that he only learns stuff for the plays and that once he's written them he forgets all the information, which means that there is a possibility that he might one day encounter one of his own plays and not have an iota of a clue of what it's going on about.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2018 14:56:14 GMT
^ Well I’m sure there would be plenty of bullsh*tters lining up to explain them all to him...
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2018 15:02:22 GMT
I've honestly never found Stoppard that oblique, and I wouldn't say I've got a broad base of knowledge either. Granted, I've not seen all of his plays, but the ones I have seen, the subjects he's covered never stand in the way of the plays themselves. They don't all beautifully explain things like Arcadia does, but I coped with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern before I ever saw Hamlet, and Travesties with only the vaguest knowledge of Dadaism, and The Real Thing, Artist Descending a Staircase, The Hard Problem, etc. In fairness Hapgood was pretty rubbish, but I didn't feel blocked out, just bored.
Pinter is in many ways Stoppard's opposite - although Stoppard could be alienating with his subject matter, I've never felt left behind, whereas Pinter writes plays about probably very straight-forward things, but I always feel like I'm struggling to keep up.
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Post by joem on Jan 16, 2018 22:40:10 GMT
Not getting involved in Pinter v Stoppard here as this is a production thread.
This is a good production of what is now a classic play. I have been quoting lines from The Birthday Party for decades without ever having seen it on stage so this was definitely a landmark moment for me. Like Alexander I will now have to sit and weep having no new Pinters to conquer.
It is about as Pinteresque a play as you can get: wordplay, menace, characters of mysterious origin, absurd interludes, informed monologues or speeches, humour... it's all there. If you watch this expecting a straight play (even after 60 years some people, oddly, still do) then you're going to end up pretty confused. I love the language of Pinter, the way he finds poetry in the most mundane speech patterns, the way he finds comedy in the use and misuse of language.
I thought the casting for this was wrong when I first learnt of it and I don't think I was wrong. Meg (Zoe Wanamaker), the landlady of the sleepy seaside boarding-house is supposed to be thirty years older than the guest Stanley (Toby Jones). It is an inappropriate, ridiculous probably one-sided affair - with the younger man using this to this advantage. This age-gap doesn't work with Jones and Wanamaker
Add to this that Goldberg (Stephen Mangan) is supposed to be the dominant character in the play, with a faux avuncular persona and you wonder why the director simply didn't switch Jones and Mangan. Would make sense to me.
Despite this, the production moves at a cracking pace. As you would expect, it is funnier on stage than on film but the effect this has to to detract somewhat from the pathos of the denouement.
Zoe Wanamaker wrings every drop of humour as the daft landlady, Toby Jones is esepcially impressive after his "transformation". It's a strong cast and it delivers.
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Post by mallardo on Jan 17, 2018 11:51:27 GMT
Yes, Toby Jones seems miscast as Stanley - the fact that he and Zoe Wanamaker's landlady, Meg, are about the same age means that her delusional flirtatiousness plays in a different context. But, that said, both actors are so strong and convincing in their roles that their odd relationship still works.
On the other hand, Stephen Mangan's Goldberg is a revelation. No, he's not the avuncular type one usually gets in the role. He's a tall powerful man at the peak of his powers, looming over everyone else, overwhelming them with his charisma and dominating them - and the play. Always smiling, speaking in a raconteur's measured tones, oozing what passes for charm as he feeds us his endless stories and reminiscences which may or may not contain granules of truth, he's a performer doing his routine and all the more ominous and threatening because of it. His double act with his agitated, slightly deranged Irish henchman, McCann (a wonderful Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) works like a dream - they're a perfect match for each other, at the same time the source of most of the play's humour and all of its dark menace.
But the entire cast - not forgetting Peter Wight's solid Petey and Pearl Mackie's vivacious Lulu - are excellent and Ian Rickson's production is spot on. He allows the play to unfold on its own terms, never forcing the issue as some recent Pinter productions (thinking of Jamie Lloyd's overheated The Homecoming, primarily) have done.
The Birthday Party is maybe the most accessible of all of Pinter's plays. No, we don't really know who these people are - their back stories are bogus - or what exactly brought them together but we know enough and we can infer the rest. As always, Pinter takes an oblique approach but there are no hidden meanings. He's not a playwright of ideas but of situations amenable to conflict and in that regard this is one of his strongest and clearest works. Great theatre.
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Post by crowblack on Jan 17, 2018 13:12:30 GMT
he and Zoe Wanamaker's landlady, Meg, are about the same age means She's 68, he's 51 - but she looks younger than that, and he does look older!
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Post by jadnoop on Jan 17, 2018 13:17:35 GMT
I thought the casting for this was wrong when I first learnt of it and I don't think I was wrong. Meg (Zoe Wanamaker), the landlady of the sleepy seaside boarding-house is supposed to be thirty years older than the guest Stanley (Toby Jones). It is an inappropriate, ridiculous probably one-sided affair - with the younger man using this to this advantage. This age-gap doesn't work with Jones and Wanamaker It's interesting that you say that. I haven't read the play, and didn't know it before going, so didn't realise that they were supposed to be so different in age. However, while I was there, I got the feeling that the casting amplified the weirdness/inappropriateness of another side of their relationship. My feeling (and again, I haven't read the text so may be misreading things) was that Meg & Stanley's dynamic flitted between two things (a) two lovers, where he didn't really like her, and (b) as a quasi-mother-son thing, where he was a petulant child. The latter seemed loudest in some of her lines and the way she seemed to dote on him (e.g. her saying something like "Not a girl, it's better to have a boy."). The fact that Toby Jones is so clearly not a child, and didn't seem too different in age from Zoe Wanamaker (especially compared with Peter Wright) amplified the weirdness of their uncertain relationship, as well as the absurdity & nervousness of the drum scene. All in all, I felt that Toby Jones was amazing. His physicality worked well, especially in his scenes with Stephen Mangan. And his transformation for the final scene as well as *that* brief moment of lighting in the dark were fantastic.
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Post by dave72 on Jan 17, 2018 13:35:25 GMT
For what it's worth, I thought Toby Jones was extraordinary too. In my view, it's important not to get bogged down in the details as specified in the text: for me, the only really useful question is whether the choices made in the production are effective. And in this case, the Meg/Stanley relationship absolutely did work in its own terms. Here's a very thoughtful interview with Peter Wight that may be useful for those who are struggling to come to terms with the play: www.broadwayworld.com/westend/article/BWW-Interview-Peter-Wight-Talks-THE-BIRTHDAY-PARTY-20180117
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Post by joem on Jan 17, 2018 19:49:29 GMT
I thought the casting for this was wrong when I first learnt of it and I don't think I was wrong. Meg (Zoe Wanamaker), the landlady of the sleepy seaside boarding-house is supposed to be thirty years older than the guest Stanley (Toby Jones). It is an inappropriate, ridiculous probably one-sided affair - with the younger man using this to this advantage. This age-gap doesn't work with Jones and Wanamaker It's interesting that you say that. I haven't read the play, and didn't know it before going, so didn't realise that they were supposed to be so different in age. However, while I was there, I got the feeling that the casting amplified the weirdness/inappropriateness of another side of their relationship. My feeling (and again, I haven't read the text so may be misreading things) was that Meg & Stanley's dynamic flitted between two things (a) two lovers, where he didn't really like her, and (b) as a quasi-mother-son thing, where he was a petulant child. The latter seemed loudest in some of her lines and the way she seemed to dote on him (e.g. her saying something like "Not a girl, it's better to have a boy."). The fact that Toby Jones is so clearly not a child, and didn't seem too different in age from Zoe Wanamaker (especially compared with Peter Wright) amplified the weirdness of their uncertain relationship, as well as the absurdity & nervousness of the drum scene. All in all, I felt that Toby Jones was amazing. His physicality worked well, especially in his scenes with Stephen Mangan. And his transformation for the final scene as well as *that* brief moment of lighting in the dark were fantastic.There is a suggestion, which perhaps I'd missed before last night, that the relationship might actually have been consummated (I used to think it was all in her mind) when she remarks, to Stanley, on the "many nice afternoons" she's had in one of the bedrooms. But then again it is Meg speaking and might have been wishful thinking.The mother-son thing is definitely there - Pinter is no stranger to incestuous suggestiveness - reinforced when she says wistfully she would rather have had a boy than a girl. She is presumably childless. But jury out whether they are or have been lovers. Still think the age gap was toned down and that has an effect.
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Post by peggs on Jan 17, 2018 22:19:43 GMT
Just out from this, sat behind pillar in row o until could move sideways after interval. I think I some what relax with pinter as I don't expect to necessarily get it all. It was funny with that ever looming menace and some wonderful acting, loved the physicality of toby Jones and some playing against type. I knew I could cone on here and have a bit more to make me think a bit more and the discussions around this play and Pinter in general are both enlightening and thought provoking. Not understanding would have frustrated me once but it's no longer vital for my enjoyment.
Could have cheerfully slapped the person who felt the need to light up their phone at quite the wrong moment.
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Post by Stephen on Jan 17, 2018 22:46:42 GMT
Also there tonight with great front row seats. Thought cast were excellent with Toby Jones and Zoë Wannamaker really shining! Great theatre!
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Post by callum on Jan 17, 2018 22:58:22 GMT
Shame to have missed you Steve - I was front row too! Excellent seats and an excellent show. By no means should it be anyone's first ever play they go and see, but it was an amusing, compelling, creepy evening. All of the cast at the top of their game - particularly Zoe Wanamaker and Toby Jones. Thought Peter Wight did well too. The fact that the fire exit lights were turned out during 'that' sequence was a brilliant touch. It was very intense. And I think, on reflection, that's what the play is about - Pinter's sparseness with exposition, background and setting allows him to drive through an intensity and (sometimes humorous) creepiness in their place. Definitely recommended.
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Post by Stephen on Jan 17, 2018 23:13:06 GMT
Shame to have missed you Steve - I was front row too! Excellent seats and an excellent show. By no means should it be anyone's first ever play they go and see, but it was an amusing, compelling, creepy evening. All of the cast at the top of their game - particularly Zoe Wanamaker and Toby Jones. Thought Peter Wight did well too. The fact that the fire exit lights were turned out during 'that' sequence was a brilliant touch. It was very intense. And I think, on reflection, that's what the play is about - Pinter's sparseness with exposition, background and setting allows him to drive through an intensity and (sometimes humorous) creepiness in their place. Definitely recommended. I agree. The complete blackouts were perfect! I also liked the notices about not eating in the theatre. Had my friend not bought me gins I'd not have drank either! Were you on your own Callum? If so you may have been sitting beside me!
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Post by callum on Jan 17, 2018 23:16:51 GMT
Shame to have missed you Steve - I was front row too! Excellent seats and an excellent show. By no means should it be anyone's first ever play they go and see, but it was an amusing, compelling, creepy evening. All of the cast at the top of their game - particularly Zoe Wanamaker and Toby Jones. Thought Peter Wight did well too. The fact that the fire exit lights were turned out during 'that' sequence was a brilliant touch. It was very intense. And I think, on reflection, that's what the play is about - Pinter's sparseness with exposition, background and setting allows him to drive through an intensity and (sometimes humorous) creepiness in their place. Definitely recommended. I agree. The complete blackouts were perfect! I also liked the notices about not eating in the theatre. Had my friend not bought me gins I'd not have drank either! Were you on your own Callum? If so you may have been sitting beside me! Yes I was! A7! Though I think there were a few solos in tonight.
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