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Influence of ‘Absurd theatre’ on the play “The Birthday Party”

Ø     About theatre of absurd:-

The Theatre of the Absurd ( French: Theater de l'Absurde) is a designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1950s, as well as one for the style of theatre which has evolved from their work. Their work expressed what happens when human existence has no meaning or purpose and therefore all communication breaks down, in fact alerting their audiences to pursue the opposite. Logical construction and argument gives way to irrational and illogical speech and to its ultimate conclusion, silence.

“Absurd theatre is associated with existentialism.”

 Critic Martin Esslin coined the term in his 1960 essay "Theatre of the Absurd." He related these plays based on a broad theme of the Absurd, similar to the way Albert Camus uses the term in his 1942 essay, "The Myth of Sisyphus ". The Absurd in these plays takes the form of man’s reaction to a world apparently without meaning, and/or man as a puppet controlled or menaced by invisible outside forces. Though the term is applied to a wide range of plays, some characteristics coincide in many of the plays: broad comedy, often similar to Vaudeville, mixed with horrific or tragic images; characters caught in hopeless situations forced to do repetitive or meaningless actions; dialogue full of clichés, wordplay, and nonsense; plots that are cyclical or absurdly expansive; either a parody or dismissal of realism and the concept of the "well-made play".

Ø     “Theatre of Absurd” = “Expression in art of the meaninglessness of human existence.”

Ø     Characteristics of the “Theatre of Absurd:-

1.Broad comedy

2.Menacing and tragic effect

3.Alienation effect

4.Hopelessness in characters

5.Fragmentations

6.Parody of the concept of ‘well maid play’

7.Unconventional writing

8.Irrationality

9.At some extent similar to the characteristics of Postmodernism.

Ø     The Birthday Party:-

 

The Birthday Party (1957) is the second full-length play by Harold Pinter and one of Pinter's best-known and most-frequently performed plays. After its hostile London reception almost ended Pinter's playwriting career, it went on to be considered "a classic".

The Birthday Party is about Stanley Webber, an erstwhile piano player in his 30s, who lives in a rundown boarding house, run by Meg and Petey Boles, in an English seaside town, "probably on the south coast, not too far from London". Two sinister strangers, Goldberg and McCann, who arrive supposedly on his birthday and who appear to have come looking for him, turn Stanley's apparently innocuous birthday party organized by Meg into a nightmare.

Ø     Effect of ‘Theatre of Absurd’ in “The Birthday Party”:-

This play comes under both “Comedy of Menace” and “Theatre of Absurd”. For Beckett, absurdity is a metaphysical predicament, Eugene Ionesco visualizes absurdity in concrete terms. For these dramatists, much of the absurdity in human existence emerges from our failures in language, communication, motivation, judgment and human relationships. Harold Pinter presents the same Theatre of the Absurd one finds in the plays of Beckett and Ionesco. Pinter, however, presents his plays in a deceptively realistic idioms and convention and goes to unmask the absurdity of the human situation and the conventional theatre. The Birthday Party has a credible dramatic situation, but not a credible plot structure, characters or any logical, progressive and linear action. In Pinter’s theatre, the persistent presence of a closed room, with a few persons huddled together inside, in a sort of “non-communicative conversation”, is significant. The dramatic image of his play is based on a basic human situation: individual’s search for security in a world which is full of anxiety, terror, false friendship and a lack of understanding between people “We live on the verge of disaster”. The absurd character, in order to reveal the precariousness of man’s existential security, is built up by three distinct elements: mystery, menace and humor. Pinter successfully creates a drama of human relations at the level of language. The plot of the play hinges on Stanley who isolates himself from the world by putting up in a squalid seaside boarding house, owned by Meg and Petey. The couple protects Stanley and tries to make him comfortable. But the peaceful atmosphere is disturbed by unexpected guests, McCann and Goldberg, the agents of unknown forces who have come to claim Stanley. Pinter presents personal breakdown, disillusionment and decay through the linguistic terror unleashed by McCann and Goldberg. Pinter’s play is the absurd story of language. In fact, it is only language that significantly happens in the play, with the characters, plot narrative and stage action hiding behind the language. Language significantly evolves the absurdity in the characters, emotions, relationships and situation. Stanley is tormented not so much by McCann and Goldberg, but by the language used by them. For Pinter, language positively creates a stasis in a communication. Uttering leads characters into pauses and silences, and any verbal assertiveness causes communicative disjunction. The dialogue between Petey and Meg are more an attempt at evasion than communication. According to Ganz, “The most distinctive elements in Pinter’s dramatic technique are the ambiguity that surrounds events, the mysterious behaves of characters, the near Omni presence of menace, and the silences and other verbal characteristics.” For instance, Pinter uses repetition as a mode to create laughter and also to ease the tension of the scene and divert the audience’s response slightly from the action. In the first Act, Meg repeatedly asks a question to create laughter

Meg – Is that you, Petey?

Pause

Petey- is that you?

Pause

 Petey?

 Petey – what?

Meg –Is that you?

 Petey – Yes it’s me.[The Birthday Party: 24]

Absurd ideas and fanciful imagination indicate the feeling of hollowness in Meg and Petey’s married life and also in Stanley’s life gripped by uncertainties and insecurities. This peaceful atmosphere is disturbed by the unexpected entry of McCann and Goldberg who come to perform a “job”. They not only disturb Stanley but arouse his fear for unknown reasons. And this tension passes on to Meg as Stanley starts behaving peculiarly. Pinter is more preoccupied with our fears, our anxieties that reflect throughout the play. Meg’s fear of losing Stanley, “You wouldn’t have to go away if you get a job” (The Birthday Party: 9), reveals her sense of insecurity. The arrival of the two men at the boarding house reflects Stanley’s fear of losing the security, which he was getting from Meg. Again, Stanley’s fear becomes an inevitable cause for absurd imagination. He says:

“They’re coming today.”

Meg: Who?

Stanley: They’re coming in a van.

Meg: who? They’ll carry a wheel barrow in a van.

Stan: They’re looking for someone.

Meg: No they’re not. (The Birthday Party: 24)

Pinter’s dialogues are so created that the ambiguity is maintained and yet they unnerve the audience and open several avenues for interpretations. In this context, Hobe says: “Pinter has consistently relied upon language device for his effects rather than ritualistic visual devices characteristic of the theatre of Absurd”. Pinter uses silence and pauses as mediums of communication. He says that the characters convey a lot by being silent or giving a pause during their conversation, both the actors and the spectators are left wondering as to what would follow. Terror is intensified further with the arrival of two agents who start interrogation and cross-examination. They accuse him of unknown guilt and sins. Stanley remains speechless and only makes the inarticulate gurgling sounds. His silence only denotes the gradual fading of memory, the disintegration of the human personality. In the process of cross-examination words become weapons. Stanley is virtually brain-washed through a flood of incomprehensible questions. Pinter’s plays can be seen as structures of poetic images of an unverifiable and, therefore, dream-like world between fantasy and nightmare. His observation of linguistic quirks is extremely sharp; his dialogue must be considered to be one of the most realistic representatives of the genuine vernacular of the mid-twentieth century. But the real speech of the real people is to a large extent composed of solecism (mistake of grammar idiom) and tautology; it can also be compared to nonsense poetry. In Pinter’s drama, implied meaning with an undertone of ambiguity is quite manifest. He has attained this unique dynamism by a clever manipulation of the exchange pattern of the dialogue. He stresses on four different aspects of language: rhythm, tempo, intensity and tension. These aspects are manifest in the brief exchanges amongst characters and their subtle moves are also precisely illustrated through lingual variation. In Pinter, the structure of the dialogue plays a vital role in creating a tense dramatic atmosphere of menace, and the absurd changes, from one to another, which is a major linguistic element in The Birthday Party. Pinter arranges his words meticulously, and he listens to them through silence. Pinter as an absurdist knows that life never shapes itself. He wants the existential adjustment to come first, and hence, the characters and situation are minutely observed. Dialogue is shaped on bad syntax, tedious repetitions and excruciating contradictions. Through dialogue he presents the inadequacy of the words we use. He hints at the unspoken and latent. He creates an absurd atmosphere by means of the theatrically useful nature of words pertaining to correct rhythm. Illusions, past recollections and childhood memories also become a medium for the characters to relieve their mounting tensions and serve for them as an escape from the present world of brutality. Meg easily enters into her world of happy memories and illusion the next day after the Birthday Party. She is not aware of the harsh reality that Stanley had to undergo harassment, and that he was carried away by force by McCann and Goldberg. With an unconscious irony, she recollects the happy moments and insists….

 “I was the belle of the ball.”

 Petey: Were you?

Meg: oh Yes, They all said I was Petey, I bet you were, too.

 Meg – oh!. It’s true, I was.

 (Pause) I know I was. (The Birthday Party: 59).

The Birthday Party evokes a mood of terror and mystery by creating a distorted world. Esslin (1969:205} rightly remarks: “It speaks plainly of the individual’s pathetic search for security of secret dreads and anxieties of the terrorism of our world.”

Ø     Conclusion:-

 As a whole, Harold Pinter’s plays reveal our state of solitude, nothingness, meaninglessness and isolation. In Pinter’s world, language has lost its semantic power and significance. The characters in The Birthday Party are neither capable using the language; language for them is like movement, the irrationality, aggressiveness and violence. Language, like an absurd hero, brings to the audience the absurdity of human situation. Pinter succeeds in creating an allegorical drama of epic proportions: Man versus his birth and existence, or Man versus language. But, though Man is foredoomed to failure in any epical battle between himself and nature, fails heroically. Absurdity engulfs everything and everyone, even language and life itself.

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