Comedy of menace in relation to the dramatic content of Pinter's play " The Birthday Party"

Discuss the concept of “ comedy of menace” in relation to the dramatic content of Pinter’s play “ The Birthday Party”.

As we know that phrase “ comedy of menace “ often applied to his early plays such as “ The Room”, “Birthday Party” and “ a Slight Ache”. It suggest that although they are funny, they are also frightening or menacing in a vague and undefined way. Even as they laugh, the audience is unsettled, ill at ease and uncomfortable.

And we also know that comedy of menace is a term used to describe the plays of David Campton and Harold Pinter by drama critic Irving Wardle, borrowed from the subtitle of Campton’s play The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace in reviewing their plays in Encore in 1958.

“comedy of menace” caught on and have been used generally in advertisements and in critical accounts, notices, and reviews to describe Pinter’s early plays and some of his later work as well.

The Birthday Party- the comedy of menace is a tragedy with a number of comic elements. It is a comedy which also produces an overwhelming tragic  effect. Throughout the play we are easily kept amused and yet throughout the play we find ourselves also on the brink of terror. Some indefinable and vague fear keeps our nerves on an edge. We feel uneasy all the time even when we are laughing or smiling with amusement. This dual quality gives to the play a unique character.

The menace evolves from actual violence in the play or from an underlying sense of violence throughout the play.

It may develop from a feeling of uncertainty and insecurity. The audience may be made to feel  that the security of the principal character and even the audience’s own security is threatened by some impending danger or fear.

This feeling of menace establishes a strong connection between character’s predicament and audience’s personal anxieties.

Pinter’s own comment

“ more often than not the speech only seems to be funny –the man in question is actually fighting a battle for his life”.

The atmosphere of menace is also created by Pinter’s ability to drop suddenly from a high comic level to one of deep seriousness.

The room or house represents security from the outside world but sadly it is impossible sustain. The menace in the  form of Goldberg and McCann represents a hostile outside world. They are the exception to the rule where life is normal and pleasant outside.

Here we find that general setting of the play is naturalistic and mundane. Involving no menace. However

One of Pinter’s greatest skill is his ability to make an apparently normal and trivial object, like a toy drum, appear strange and threatening. Pinter can   summon forth an atmosphere of menace from ordinary everyday objects and events and one way in which this is done is by combining two apparently opposed moods such as terror and amusement.

Much of Birthday Party is both frightening and funny. Stanley is destroy by ‘ a torrent of words, but mingled in with the serious accusations eg “ He’s killed his wife” are ones which are trivial and ludicrous eg “ why do you pick your nose?”

Another technique that Pinter uses to create an atmosphere of menace is to cast doubt on almost everything in the play. One method of doing this is to have a character give a clear and definite statement and then have him flatly deny it later on.

The nature of reality here is confused the audience no longer knows what is or is not true and out of this comes an atmosphere of mystery and uncertainty. Pinter does not give background information about the characters in Birthday Party. This means the characters are not fixed as belonging to any particular place or time! Stanly has no history, he does not belong to anyone or anywhere, he has no family.

Thus at last I would like to say that the absurdity of the play which is represented through menacing effect has its own symbolic significance. It tries to explain the human predicament in this indifferent & hostile world.