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Thursday 4 December 2008

Déjà vu

The Deep Blue Sea
Vaudeville

The Birthday Party
Lyric Hammersmith

Pygmalion
Old Vic

Another revolutionary Fifties play, The Birthday Party, has returned to the Lyric where it premièred half a century ago. David Farr’s production makes sense of Pinter’s bizarre attempt to write a crime thriller in the new absurdist style. Justin Salinger is an absorbing, welcoming Stanley and Nicholas Woodeson fizzes with menacing energy as Goldberg. Just occasionally — during the game of blindman’s bluff — Woodeson slips out of character and into a Pinter panto of his own imagining, skedaddling around the stage like a woodentop on speed. The role of Meg, that regal dimwit, is done with a gloriously light touch by Sheila Hancock, who has discovered yet another role that perfectly suits her raffish slovenliness. It all works extremely well but then we know what to expect. In 1958 this play ran for a week. Now officially crowned ‘a classic’ it runs for barely three and I detect no loud clamour to bring it into the West End. Pinter has a strange sort of greatness. He’s like some mythical outlaw whose reputation outshines his deeds. Everyone talks about him but no one wants to see him face to face.

To yet another classic. Bernard Shaw can be a better pamphleteer than a playwright and it’s amazing that his best-known comedy Pygmalion isn’t more seriously marred by its preachy sideswipes at ‘middle-class morality’. Peter Hall’s near-faultless production is gorgeous to look at and boasts three stunning performances. Tim Pigott-Smith turns Higgins into a lovable intellectual bumpkin. Michelle Dockery’s Eliza is hilariously solemn and Tony Haygarth’s rapid-fire Alfred Doolittle races through Shaw’s dialogue at well over the speed limit but makes every word count. The sets and costumes are exceptionally handsome and Eliza’s undulous cream dress in Act III is as exquisite as a swan on the wing. So where’s the fault? The script. It peaks too early, in the first half. Everything that follows ‘not bloody likely’ — a sublime moment of comedy — is wordy and frictionless by comparison. Shaw might have learnt a lesson about dramatic escalation from Rattigan. Save the best, or worst, till last.

More articles from: Lloyd Evans | this section

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