Harold Pinter’s connection with the Irish: “They respect the truth and they have a sense of humour”

Our first visit to Ireland with a Pinter play was in 2004.

We brought The Caretaker over for a packed fortnight of one-night stands. We travelled from Galway to Monaghan, Antrim to Enniskillen, then headed South to Newbridge, Kilmallock and eventually to our final stop, St John's Theatre in Listowel.

Its manager, Joe Murphy, is something of a legend on the Irish regional touring circuit. He runs a thriving theatre as well as a busy farm, often milking his herd before turning up to open the doors of a morning. I have many fond recollections of visiting St John's over the years, but our appearance with The Caretaker was particularly memorable.

To begin with, our set – an attic room built from assorted junk on a huge metal skeleton – wouldn’t fit on the tiny stage, so we had to construct it on the floor of the auditorium. This meant we had none of our usual masking, or a black backdrop. There was one entrance, from the tiny dressing room (the old vestry) at the side of the stage, and the lighting was fairly basic.

Despite these changes to our usual routine, the evening began very well, the audience quiet and appreciative, until the moment where two of the actors had to find their way onto stage in a blackout. They would normally just walk on from the wings, but at St John’s we didn’t have that luxury. So the actors playing Mick and Davies staggered their way around and through the back of the set in pitch darkness, trying to feel their way into the main space.

For safety, the younger led the older by the hand. They had nearly found their arrival point, when our stage manager, who could see next to nothing at all, took a guess that they had reached their destination. In his desire to move things along, he brought the lights up on the tiny manual desk a little too quickly. The actors, startled, turned sharply to the front, and the audience were confronted with two characters, one dressed in long johns, the other in a leather jacket, like a pair of rabbits caught in the proverbial headlights, holding hands for dear life. The crowd burst into spontaneous applause at this sight, then as the two actors untangled themselves, quietened down to watch the rest of the play.

Relationship with Pinter
This experience for me somehow perfectly captures the Irish relationship with Pinter. Relaxed enough to laugh, often at the most absurd moments, but always ready to listen and engage. Pinter understood all too well that there is a deep irreverence in the Irish spirit. When Stanley tells McCann of his fondness for the Irish in The Birthday Party, it may as well be Pinter himself speaking.

‘I know Ireland very well. I’ve many friends there. I love that country and I admire and trust its people. I trust them. They respect the truth and they have a sense of humour. I think their policemen are wonderful. I’ve been there. I’ve never seen such sunsets.’

Pinter's connection with Irish audiences was built on strong foundations. In 1951 and 1952, he toured Ireland as a young actor with the Anew McMaster repertory company, appearing in seven Shakespeare plays, as well as playing Creon in Oedipus Rex and Jack Worthing in The Importance of Being Earnest.

Pinter later recalled his audition with McMaster in an interview with Mel Gussow: “I sent him a photograph and went to see him in a flat near Willesden Junction. He offered me six pounds a week, said I could get digs for 25 shillings at the most, told me how cheap cigarettes were and that I could play Horatio, Bassanio and Cassio. It was my first proper job on the stage.”

An old school actor-manager, McMaster led a freewheeling, anarchic company, a collection of artists and free thinkers known for their relaxed morals and robust language. For a 21-year-old Pinter, hungry for experience and still learning his craft, it was the kind of formative, colourful experience that would shape his understanding of what theatre could be.

Unwavering support
The Birthday Party will be the fourth Pinter play London Classic Theatre has brought to Ireland. Apart from two visits with The Caretaker in 2004 and 2010, we toured Old Times in 2006 and Betrayal in 2013. As the company has grown over the past 16 years, the support from Irish theatres has been unwavering. Once we have had the opportunity to get a foot in the door and introduce our work to their audiences, venues across Ireland have continued to book our productions.

This loyalty, in turn, has allowed us to push the boundaries with the choice of plays we offer. Touring companies such as LCT depend almost entirely on the backing and encouragement of venue managers to welcome us onto their stages. We begin the Irish leg of our tour of The Birthday Party at the Everyman, Cork, loyal supporters who have taken our last 14 productions and we are very excited to be ending the tour at the Gaiety – our first visit to the Grand Old Lady of South King Street.

I’ve always felt that the business of theatre-going in the UK feels very different from that in Ireland. Rather than a concentration on the ‘event’, Irish audiences come primarily to listen to the play. There is an appreciation for language and a respect for storytelling that just doesn’t feel the same in London or the UK regions.

It’s easy to generalise, but in my experience, audiences in Ireland really get Pinter. They don’t necessarily expect everything explained or tied up in a neat package. If there are too many unanswered questions, I think UK audiences can feel somehow cheated. However, in Ireland, it always feels to me that there is more room for manoeuvre, more patience.

Pinter, of course, is a master of obfuscation. Like Beckett, he wants his audience to work hard, to puzzle things through. In short, he wants them to think. His plays are not simply a nice evening out, but a complex challenge for the audience to go on a journey with him, and one that may involve more questions than answers. Like my actors at St John’s Theatre in 2004, an evening spent in the company of Harold Pinter may occasionally feel like one is stumbling through the dark, but there is always light (and, hopefully, applause) at the end of the tunnel.

- Michael Cabot is the founder and Artistic Director of London Classic Theatre. Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party comes to Dublin's Gaiety Theatre for one week only (30 May 30 - June 4, 2016). For more, see gaietytheatre.ie