The Birthday Party

Description
Harold Pinter's first full-length play, The Birthday Party amply demonstrates the style that would be famously (and repeatedly) called “comedy of menace.” Stanley, ostensibly a lapsed concert pianist, is a boarder in the seaside home of an older couple and appears to be hiding from something; the something arrives in the form of genteel thugs of mysterious provenance. Director Aaron Snook's well-managed, disturbingly funny revival conveys the proper sense of benighted dread, thanks in large part to actor Joseph Stearns, who makes clear the oppressive weight of Stanley's burden without the benefit of being able to name it.—Kris Vire