2 – 31 August
New production of The Birthday Party opens at Bath’s Ustinov Studio starring Jane Horrocks and John Marquez
Jane Horrocks and John Marquez lead the cast in a new production of The Birthday Party, written by Harold Pinter and directed by Richard Jones, which opens in Bath this summer. The production appears at the Ustinov Studio at the Theatre Royal Bath from Friday 2nd to Saturday 31st August as part of Deborah Warner’s 2024 Season.
In Harold Pinter’s compelling and intriguing comedy of menace, a seemingly innocent birthday party in a rundown seaside boarding house is transformed when two sinister strangers arrive unexpectedly.
Stanley, an unemployed pianist, leads a mundane but peaceful life as the only guest living at Meg and Petey’s seaside boarding house. When the deeply sinister Goldberg and McCann arrive to celebrate his birthday party, the door is thrown open to the stuff of nightmares. Everyone, from the resort owners to the unsuspecting girl next door, becomes caught in the unruly web of Stanley’s peculiar birthday party.
Jane Horrocks, who stars as Meg, is an Olivier Award, Golden Globe Award and BAFTA nominee for her work on stage and screen. Her stellar career has included roles ranging from Bubble in the television sensation Absolutely Fabulous to Ros Pritchard in The Amazing Mrs Pritchard. She starred as Nicola in Mike Leigh’s film Life is Sweet, Miss Irvine in The Witches and LV in Little Voice, a role for which she also received acclaim on stage at the National Theatre and in the West End in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice. Jane also played Jean in the film Sunshine on Leith, and has voiced many memorable characters in the multi-award nominated animated movies Chicken Run, Arthur Christmas, Corpse Bride and Watership Down.
John Marquez, who stars as Goldberg, has performed at the Theatre Royal Bath previously in The Taming of the Shrew in 2012 and Boeing Boeing in 2009. His West End stage credits include Opening Night, Privates On Parade and The Anniversary, as well as productions at London’s The Old Vic, The Other Palace, Almeida Theatre, Young Vic, Royal Court, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, National Theatre, RSC and Chichester Festival Theatre. On television he played DC Joe Penhale in Doc Martin, Ray in In The Club, Felix in Britannia and appeared in guest roles in Hotel Babylon, Death in Paradise, Ronnie Ancona & Co., EastEnders and Porridge.
The cast is completed by Caolan Byrne as McCann, Carla Harrison-Hodge as Lulu, Sam Swainsbury as Stanley and Nicolas Tennant as Petey.
Five-time Olivier Award-winning director Richard Jones returns to the Ustinov Studio following last year’s phenomenally acclaimed Machinal, which transferred to London’s Old Vic Theatre earlier this year. Richard has directed productions on some of London’s largest stages including the Coliseum and the Royal Opera House. He returns to Bath this summer bringing his unique talent for epic scale to the powerful intimacy of the Ustinov Studio.
Filled with hilarity and menace, the mundane and the absurd, The Birthday Party launched Pinter as one of the most significant contemporary British dramatists and was his first full length play. It was preceded by his first play, The Room, written in 1957, which received its premiere in The Drama Studio at Bristol University. The Birthday Party received its premiere in 1958 at the Arts Theatre in Cambridge.
Playwright, director, actor, poet and political activist, Harold Pinter (1930 – 2008) was born in Hackney, East London. His acting career spanned over fifty years. He wrote twenty-nine plays, which also include The Caretaker, Old Times, The Homecoming and Betrayal; twenty-one screenplays including The Servant, The Go-Between and The French Lieutenant’s Woman; and directed twenty-seven theatre productions, including James Joyce’s Exiles, David Mamet’s Oleanna, seven plays by Simon Gray and many of his own plays, including his penultimate, Celebration, paired with his first, The Room at London’s Almeida Theatre in 2000. Pinter was awarded the Shakespeare Prize (Hamburg), the European Prize for Literature (Vienna), the Pirandello Prize (Palermo), the David Cohen British Literature Prize, the Olivier Award and the Moliere D’Honneur for Lifetime Achievement. In 1999 he was made a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature.
The Birthday Party appears at the Ustinov Studio at the Theatre Royal Bath from Friday 2nd to Saturday 31st August. To book tickets contact the Theatre Royal Bath Box Office on 01225 448844 and online at theatreroyal.org.uk/ustinov
Photo credit: Foteini Christofilopoulou
