The setting for David K. Barnes’s 2017 play Birthday Suit is certainly modern – references to financial crises and Brexit problems anchoring us firmly in place – but there’s something quite traditional about it. More than anything, the play – staged by Masquerade in their versatile Blue Box – makes me think of an Alan Ayckbourn-style light comedy.
Except, this time, the action’s been plucked out of the 1970s, given a smartphone and a more millennial sensibility, and sent romping out onto the stage in black tie. The play shies away from confronting any of the larger-scale issues that it uses to set the scene, however, choosing to focus instead on the birthday party of one rather awkward risk analyst named Dick.
Dick is the colleague nobody seems to like. He was probably the child no one would sit with at school, standing nervously in the corner while the rest of his classmates passed him by. You’re probably thinking of someone like that right now.
It would be very easy to turn this character into a caricature for social anxiety and awkwardness, especially for an actor like Malcolm Galea, who has no shortage of charisma himself. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to find that, while silly through and through, there were very enjoyable moments of humanity to Galea’s performance.
Yes, Dick is a bit of a weirdo who doesn’t know how small talk works, and may be somewhat over-attached to a tray of Quality Street, but he also comes off as a decent sort of guy, and that’s down to the performance as much as it is to the script.
Director Anthony Bezzina keeps the pace of the play up well
Director Anthony Bezzina keeps the pace of the play up well, although I felt like the script itself meandered a little and lost some of its steam in the second act. The staging against a mostly white apartment nicely emphasised the awkwardness of Dick’s sparsely-attended birthday bash. I must say that it’s been quite a breath of fresh air over the last few years, to see sets that have some pride and thought put into them, rather than just cobbling together the same sofa and coffee table combo that have made more stage appearances than most actors I know. In this case, the set is functional, but stylish and well thought-out too.
To keep the play from slipping into the territory of out-and-out farce, the human elements of the story played an important factor. The relationship between neurotic office newcomer Diana (Tina Rizzo) and her put down boyfriend Nick (Joe Azzopardi); Dick’s relationship with his tempestuous wife Valerie (Larissa Bonaci); and certain key past connections are the devices used to lift the play from fluff to social comedy. Unfortunately, I feel that Masquerade’s production falters the most when it fails to divine the human element from its comedy source.
As one-time aspiring musician Nick, Azzopardi is really refreshingly natural, slouching across the stage like a child being dragged unwillingly to school as his girlfriend tries to introduce him to her office lifestyle. Even in the character’s less flattering moments, he manages to come across as relatable, and his arguments with Rizzo’s Diane hit more than one chord of truth for anyone who’s ever been told to ‘get a real job’ and stop worrying about all that artistic nonsense. In contrast, Rizzo is a far more high-energy figure on stage, squaring off well against Azzopardi in their lovers’ tiffs.
While I feel like she carried herself well on stage, however, I felt that her portrayal of Diane did not always mesh well with Azzopardi’s more natural approach with Nick, and lacked a little bit of depth.
As Dick’s estranged wife Valerie, Bonaci storms in to really get the play’s tangled web of comical coincidences going. While she doesn’t lack stage presence, I feel that she’s let down somewhat by the script itself, or possibly by Bezzina’s direction, and doesn’t quite manage to rise above a slightly two-dimensional performance. Valerie is an over-the-top character who, at least in this production, fails to find that moment which makes her ridiculous antics human, so the over-the-top diva moments got a little tiring as the script wore into its second hour.
Despite a script that gets a little too carried away with itself, however, Birthday Suit is an enjoyable evening’s entertainment and Galea’s performance, in particular, is a real knock-out.
Delivering chuckles throughout, and ending on a note that is equal parts unavoidable and hilarious, Birthday Suit was a solid offering to the season from Masquerade.