A Birthday Party — Harold Pinter — Costumes and Props — IB English Literature (2015)

There are two ways in which the actor’s body is instructed or controlled in a play: through what the actor is required to wear and through the stage props they have to operate. A stage prop is a part of the setting that is especially distinctive in that it can be used or handled and can often convey a lot of meaning to an audience, but one should note that it is difficult to discuss costumes and props in isolation to the play’s setting since they function within it. ‘The Birthday Present’, written by Harold Pinter and first performed in 1957, is set in an unspecified time and place in Britain and the theme of state oppression and anonymity are reflected by the costumes and props with which the actors operate. ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, written by Oscar Wilde and first performed in 1895, is set in Victorian Britain and takes a satirical approach to social mores and traditions that were prevalent in the Victorian era. The playwright treats the institution of marriage and the upper-classes with triviality and one marked by profound artifice. The costumes and props with which the actors operate are deliberately and meticulously positioned to reveal a lack of morals among the upper-classes. These props can be said to possess a semiotic function.

In Act One of ‘The Birthday Party’, the setting is introduced as being a boarding house in an unspecified British “seaside town”, and its tenants, Meg and Petey, are just as ordinary as the setting itself. Their inconsequential and banal exchanges are reflected in the ordinariness of their costumes and the props within the setting. “The hatch” in “the kitchen” and plain foods like “cornflakes” and “fried bread” all establish their working class status. The theme of anonymity is reflected by Stanley’s residence in this seemingly isolated shack given that he is its only occupant. Meg and Petey pose no threat to him, which is highlighted by the fact that Stanley gets away with appearing “unkempt”, “unshaven” and only wearing a “pyjama jacket” when we are first introduced to him. The couple’s passivity towards Stanley’s indolence conveys that he is exempt from any social obligations, which inevitably makes him a target of the “state” and his dishevelled costume conveys this.

Towards the end of Act One, Stanley is given a drum as a gift from Meg and its function as a prop is to signify the impending violence that is to proceed in the subsequent Acts as well as to represent Stanley’s mental breakdown. Pinter describes how the drum “hangs around [Stanley’s] neck” and the “beat” which he plays on the drum becomes increasingly “erratic, uncontrolled” and later “savage and possessed”. In a literal sense, the character’s “erratic” handling of the drum reveals his childlike nature and the audience get the sense that he is deliberately behaving this way to distress Meg who was hoping that he would play a nice tune. In a more figurative sense, Stanley’s “savage” and “possessed” operation of the drum suggests that the character is having some sort of mental relapse, almost as though the news of the “two men” has sparked a latent animal instinct within the character in that he feels he must defend his territory: the boarding house. Much like an ape beats its chest when it feels its territory is being threatened by an exterior force, Stanley responds to Goldberg and McCann in animalistic fashion. The use of animal symbolism together with the semiotic force of the drums convey Stanley’s opposition towards these unspecified agents.

Pinter uses props to demonstrate the differences in power among Stanley – who eventually becomes a victim – and Goldberg and McCann, who are the state oppressors. On a symbolic level, Stanley’s glasses represent his individuality since it is one of the distinctive features of his costume. In Act Two of the play ‘McCann backs slowly across the stage’ and ‘breaks Stanley’s glasses’ by ‘snapping the frames,’ Stanley, who has lost his sight, becomes completely powerless and vulnerable to Goldberg and McCann’s verbal assaults. During a game of ‘Blind Man’s Bluff’, McCann’s manipulation of the stage props along with Stanley’s impaired eyesight cause Stanley to ‘walk into the drum and fall over with his foot caught in it.’ Both Stanley’s tripping over the drumsticks together with the loss of his glasses, which is a vital part of his character costume, signify a loss of power and foreshadows an impending violence.

In Act Three, Stanley’s costume suffers a radical transformation, which is used by Pinter to indicate the character’s conformity and loss of identity. Stanley is described as being dressed in a “dark well cut suit and white collar” as well as being “clean shaven”. This description sits in marked contrast to his earlier description in Act One in which he is described as appearing “unkempt” and being “unshaven”. The antithetical and dramatic change in Stanley’s appearance, who is now dressed in typically formal attire, demonstrate the extent to which Goldberg and McCann have subjugated Stanley, and on a symbolic level, the pair represent ‘the establishment’ that demand conformity to their rules. The disturbing image of Stanley’s loss of identity is accentuated by the image of the character holding his “broken glasses in his hands”. The same glasses that made the character once distinct and individual has now been reduced to a token of his former self.

In Act One of ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, the themes of artifice and aesthete are reflected by the morning room of Algernon’s London residence. A morning room is typically found in private houses where guests are to be received and is often but one of the many sitting rooms in which guests can congregate. The room is “luxuriously and artistically furnished” and this image of an elaborately embellished setting establishes Algernon’s upper class status and reveals his aesthetic tastes. The irony, however, is that this setting, which characterised by artful decor is subverted by Algernon’s exchange with his servant, Lane, in which the servant openly admits to having drank some of his master’s champagne. Instead of displaying subservience as one might expect from a domestic servant in nineteenth-century Britain, Lane responds to Algernon’s inquisition regarding the missing champagne with a superficial remark on “the superior quality of the wine”, to which Algernon’s reciprocates with an equally casual comment on marriage as being “demoralising”, which would have also been an unconventional thing to say during the Victorian era. This subversion of roles in which the servant is seemingly more of his master’s social equal as opposed to his inferior is comic and as a prop the champagne generates much of this comedy.

Later in Act One, both Algernon and Jack childishly brawl over a cigarette case, a prop that generates much the scene’s comedy and highlights the characters’ irresponsibility. Jack describes Algernon’s hoarding of his alleged cigarette case as being “ungentlemanly” in the hope that this will cause Algernon to return it to him. Interestingly, Jack’s tactic to retrieving his cigarette case is to appeal to Algernon’s status as a budding gentleman and it is telling of how men of his status were supposedly meant to possess a strong sense of social responsibility and a deep-seated morality. None of these qualities, however, can be found in Algernon and so Jack’s futile attempt at persuading him in this way is both ironic and comic since expected norms are once more comically reversed.

Jack and Algernon’s appearance is a comic façade given that underneath lies social irresponsibility. Lady Bracknell herself admits that her nephew “has nothing” but “looks everything”, and this succinct but equally well-balanced phrasing is very revealing of the superficialities of the upper-classes given that Algernon is more preoccupied with keeping up appearances than managing his responsibilities like paying his bills as opposed to “tearing” them up.

In Act Two, we are introduced to a garden setting, which is used to reinforce the idea that the characters in the play are refined. While this may be true on the surface, underneath lies a shallow and childish nature and this is captured when Cecily and Gwendolen similarly brawl over more props on stage. In their first exchange, their tendency to obsess over superficialities is at its optimum: both women wear dresses, although Cecily is apparently “sadly simple” as noted by Lady Bracknell but this comment cannot be taken seriously given that Lady Bracknell is condescending towards all apart from her daughter to some extent. In repartee spirit, both Cecily and Gwendolen seek to score points off each other by targeting each others’ weak points. Cecily’s weak point is that she is from the country, which was generally perceived as being less sophisticated than the city from which Gwendolen gains much of her esteem. However, Cecily is formidable both in speech and appearance and seems to be able to rebut every one of Gwendolen’s disdainful remarks, including her contempt for Cecily’s associations with typical farming equipment like a “spade”.

The rivalry between the women is perfectly embodied in this brief exchange where Gwendolen comments that she “cannot understand how anybody manages to exist in the country” since it “bores [her] to death”. Cecily replies by sophisticatedly terming Gwendolen’s description as “agricultural depression” and observes that the “aristocracy are suffering very much from it”, too, which is an implicit but nonetheless direct affront to Gwendolen given her aristocratic status. Both women deliver perfectly balanced sentences (as one would expect from an Oscar Wilde character), which establishes their higher social status but it is clear that behind their veneer of social propriety hides a potential for violence and this veneer collapses almost completely once they begin bickering over the “tea and cakes” and their shared love for “Earnest”. Gwendolen: “You have filled my tea with three lumps of sugar […] I am known for the gentleness of my disposition […] I warn you, Miss Cardew, you may go too far.” Cecily replies to this complaint and implicit threat saying “To save my poor, innocent, trusting boy […] there are no lengths to which I would not go.” In this exchange, it is clear that both women are willing to abandon traditional notions of decorum and femininity to secure their lover whom they have both mistakenly mismatched and their fighting over the props highlights their obstinacy in comic fashion.

In the final act of the play, the handbag comically brings about the resolution of plot: Jack (or rather Earnest as he is finally revealed to be) discovers that he is indeed a part of Lady Bracknell’s family and this absurd joke about the importance of being born into the right family is set up at the end of Act One by Lady Bracknell’s infamous and comic lines delivered to Jack being born in a handbag.