More so than reviving Pinter’s The Birthday Party (which also premiered here, but notoriously flopped) – this homecoming feels a little like tempting fate: no one knew, back in early 1982, what awaited them; now that element of surprise has gone, and the play’s status is almost daunting. Fate was duly tempted at Tuesday’s opening night: in the venerable presence of the author and the original (crucial) director Michael Blakemore, a glitch mid-way through the second act saw the lights fail, the show halt.
It was memorable in a life-meets-art way, but not especially funny, underlining the fact that while we love to see things going awry on stage there’s a knack to it. The cast coped heroically but I’d be lying if I said the evening had been flying up to that point. The direction is meticulous, the energy is unflagging, ample resource has gone into the mock-Tudor country house set and its backstage counterpart. Many of the cast – Debra Gillett, Meera Syal, Daniel Rigby – are naturally gifted at comedy.
True, some of the plot detail is so fine, it tends to blur at speed. We can be so busy keeping up, and admiring the craftsmanship, we forget to laugh. But undeniably, a cultural shift has pushed the play further away from us – the hoary farce Frayn sent up is now rarely sighted. And audiences today are warier of material that trades on stereotypes: the predatory, callous director, who has competing women on the go; the stock-type ‘Arabs’ in “Nothing On”, too.
