CityLit Theater’s ‘The Birthday Party’ opens with a load of laughs, seducing the audience with its low-key humor, then shaking us up as sinister overtones are gradually revealed.

We are introduced to the middle-aged operators of a British seaside boarding house: Meg (Elaine Carlson is delightfully comedic) and her dead-pan husband Petey (Linsey Falls in a flawless regional accent). Meg is all in a dither all the time—think 'All in the Famiily’s' Edith Bunker—just able to serve breakfasts of cornflakes and keep the larder filled.

WIth a naturalistic style that is reminiscent of David Mamet’s work (though written by Harold Printer decades before him) this play will leave you smitten by the characters, and the way repetitive, everyday speech is mined for its humor. And as with great comedy, it’s all in the timing, which the cast and director handle beautifully.

Meg and Petey's very down-on-its-heels establishment has had but one guest for the past year, Stanley (David Fink) and we soon see that the relationship with this lone customer has devolved to an enmeshed co-dependency between Meg and Stanley. She mothers, teases, and fauns over Stanley, who returns the excessive attention with a withering derision and acidic jokes that fly over the good natured Meg’s head.

Fink is perfect as the dissolute Stanley, a failed musician who sleeps in, and stays perpetually in pajamas and robe. Soon arrives the vivacious, self-assured Lulu (Sahara Glasener-Boles), a comely lass about Stanley’s age, who chides him for not bathing or going out of doors.

Things turn ominous when two new guests arrive in a big black limo—the erudite Goldberg (James Sparling is pitch perfect) and his towering thug McCann (Will Casey). Now Pinter takes the action to a darker level, as the titular birthday party for Stanley unfolds, despite his disinclination to attend. Fink ably registers Stanley’s discomfort with strangers entering the household, and Stan moves from suspicious to paranoid, desperately demanding (to no avail) that Goldberg and McCann find other accommodations. The play can be taken literally, but its many enigmatic and contradictory twists place it firmly in the absurdist camp. 

‘The Birthday Party’ was Harold Pinter’s first full length play, and it broke the mold, launching a genre: it is a ”comedy of menace” (as opposed to comedy of errors or of manners). Perhaps because it is so out-of-the-box, it closed after just eight performances following its 1957 premiere. But a positive review secured attention for Pinter, and ‘The Birthday Party’ is now recognized as a masterwork.

City Lit distinguishes itself in the selection of this play, and in an absolutely wonderful production. Highly recommended on the basis of casting alone, artistic director Terry McCabe deserves kudos. Don’t miss a chance to see this live production of a Printer classic, running at CityLit Theater through February 26, 2023.