 |
     |
The Birthday Party
| Revival of the play by
Harold Pinter
Decor: Tom Piper Yet no one could better Nicholas Woodeson's sulky, karate-chopping McCann or Bob Peck's oily Goldberg. He shows his mettle by grappling with Emma Amos's stupendous, rocket-shaped frontage in a brutally sexy scene. And he replies to her remark "I bet you were a good husband" with "You should have seen her funeral". - Maureen Paton, Daily Express, 18 March 1994 Bob Peck redefines Goldberg by avoiding all trace of the stereotypical Jewish uncle figure. At first, I thought dangerously so. But gradually you realise the point of the stiff gestures, the manic neatness, and hands that even when pawing the obliging Lulu's body have a strange surgical detachment. This is a man whose key philosophy is "Follow the line, the line, McCann, and you can't go wrong." And what Peck gives us is a stultified organisation man whose synthetic past and interrogative manner mask a pure and absolute terror. The wages of conformity, Peck cunningly suggests, is insecurity. - Michael Billington, Guardian, 19 March 1994 Less successful is Bob Peck, curiously cast as Goldberg, the jaunty Jew who arrives on Stanley's birthday with menacing McCann (Nicholas Woodeson) to make him an offer he (literally) can't refuse. Peck has an alarming resemblance to unkosher Basil Fawlty and spends too much time working on his character before our eyes; but he is finally a genuinely oppressive force in a play which still entertains and unnerves in equal measure, while refusing to provide any answers to the same old questions: 'What has he done?', 'Where have they come from?' and 'What did they do to him?' - Michael Coveney, Observer, 20 March 1994
|
Pinter's The Birthday
Party, now on the National's Lyttelton Stage in a dazzling new production
by Sam Mendes, did not make much sense to its original audiences in 1958,
though I am never entirely certain why they are forever being blamed for
this. At the time, Pinter had only recently given up the life of a touring
actor, and in one sense his play is a merciless, brilliant parody of all
the tacky stage thrillers of the period, except that the Inspector never
calls.
In another, of course, it changed forever the relationship of playwright to punter: for the first time, Pinter demanded that his spectators do some of the work for themselves, make their own connections, sort out their own puzzles instead of waiting for the dramatist to serve them a neat denouement. Nothing here is quite what it seems, but Mendes has courageously given back to The Birthday Party all the trappings of its times: from the bouncy light radio-programme music which introduces it, through Dora Bryan's supremely cosy seaside landlady, to Bob Peck and Nicholas Woodeson as the B-movie heavies, every echo here of the late Fifties gives us the perfect period flavour with which to understand and recall the background against which the play first exploded. - Sheridan Morley, Spectator, 26 March 1994 As Goldberg, the thinking man's thug, Bob Peck conceals his savagery under a cloak of elegance and is all the more chilling for it. - Bill Hagerty, Today, 18 March 1994 Peck's Goldberg, with his tributes to family unity, references to gefilte fish and only meeting at simchahs, is never quite convincing as a Jew, never quite looks capable of the brutality that brainwashes and bludgeons Stanley into catatonic silence before he and McCann take him to the waiting black car. - David Nathan, Jewish Chronicle, 25 March 1994 As Goldberg, the play's most menacing figure, Bob Peck certainly has force; he neatly conveys the character's elements of suave deceit; and, after cuddling the buxom Lulu on his lapa a while, he adds a hilarious touch of embarrassment, getting her to get up and crossing his legs. But his manner is too elaborate; his is an unrelaxed performance that keeps signalling its every effect to us. - Alastair Macaulay, Financial Times, 19 March 1994 As the two persecutors, Goldberg and McCann, Bob Peck and Nicholas Woodeson don't make the mistake of overplaying the stereotyped elements in their roles. Instead they play around with them, to deadly effect. Peck is like a gangster uncle who has come back to dispense pearls of worldly wisdom at his nephew's bar mitzvah. McCann sings sentimental ballads, but you feel that the Semtex and the electric drill can't be far away. - John Gross, Sunday Telegraph, 20 March 1994
|
|
The Bob Peck Database was originally launched in September 1998.· · Relaunched on 24 January 2003. · · Photos are copyrighted by the photographers. · · Articles, reviews and interviews are copyrighted by the publications cited. · · This website is © copyrighted by cynicole, 2003. |