I went to the the press night of The Birthday Party last night and was pretty underwhelmed. The story--if that's the right word--revolves around the relationship between three men: a slightly loopy, unemployed musician, a Jewish gangster and a defrocked priest. Are all three members of some sinister, possibly criminal, organisation? Has the musician gone AWOL? Have the other two been sent to bring him back to headquarters? Or kill him? This play is strong on mood and atmosphere, as you’d expect from Pinter, but the precise meaning of the events you're witnessing is never clear.

When it was first performed in the West End in 1958, every critic slated it, with the exception of Harold Hobson on The Sunday Times. Unfortunately, by the time Hobson's review came out, the play had already closed. This time round, judging from the reviews I’ve seen, it will be universally praised. But just as the critics were wrong in 1958, isn't it possible that they're wrong now? At the time, Pinter's absurdist deconstruction of the country house thriller--his two-fingered rebuke to The Mousetrap, if you like--must have seemed incredibly refreshing. Today, by contrast, it seems like so much old hat, just another hi/low modernist confection. No doubt one of the reasons The Birthday Party feels so shopworn is because Pinter has been so widely copied, but the upshot is that feels less like a classic than a museum piece.

In a sense, Pinter has only himself to blame. Unlike Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams or Eugene O’Neil or any of the other great playwrights of the 20th Century, Pinter wasn't trying to write for the ages. At least, you don't get the impression he was. He was merely trying to upset the theatrical apple cart, something he succeeded in doing spectacularly well. The real problem with The Birthday Party is that, in deliberately eschewing the virtues of the well-constructed play and trying to be as inaccessible as possible, Pinter has condemned himself to obscurity in the long run. Without a story to latch on to--without any discernable plot, in fact--there's not enough for audiences to link with. Compare The Birthday Party to The Bridge Over The River Kwai, another work dating from 1958 that deals with the same subject, namely, the heavy price paid by individuals who throw in their lot with the powers that be. That truly is a classic and one that will last forever because it has such a well-crafted dramatic narrative. Pinter may have given a word to the language, but I’d be surprised if he’s given any plays to posterity.