THE Tamaritans start the new year with a real challenge, a challenge for the company and for audiences.

Their chosen play is Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party.

The term "Pinteresque" has become common currency for anything menacing and enigmatic.

The Birthday Party certainly contains menace aplenty, and is enigmatic enough with unrevealed motives to provide puzzlement

Yet there are those who claim its plot is clear and easy to understand, and all the events and characters can be interpreted logically.

It totally baffled its first audiences and was, as Pinter admits "massacred by the critics".

He saw a Thursday matinee, one of only eight performances before it was taken off, and he was one of only seven in the audience.

When she heard he was the author, the usherette commented, "Oh, you poor chap."

However, after the production had prematurely closed, leading theatre critic Harold Hobson's rave review was printed in the Sunday Times.

Risking his reputation, he wrote that Pinter "possesses the most original, disturbing, and arresting talent in theatrical London".

Hobson's review changed perceptions, but it did not mean Pinter was suddenly lionised.

It was two year later that The Caretaker, his best known work, really established his reputation.

So what actually happens in the narrative of The Birthday Party? It is set in Meg and Petey's run down guest house where piano player Stanley is the sole resident.

Two sinister strangers, Goldberg and McCann, arrive unexpectedly, and claim it is Stanley's birthday. Stanley is afraid of them – understandably so since later that evening they terrorise him and force him to play a game of blind man's buff.

The following morning they take Stanley away, leaving Petey to reflect on how successful the birthday party had been.

Leading us through the intricacies of the plot is director Niall Clinton, one of the company's regular directors who is never afraid of tackling the most taxing of texts.

The roles of Meg and Petey are in the safe hands of Rebekah Ash and Geoff Strickland, while the atmosphere of eerie menace is created by the enigmatic McCann and Goldberg, played by George Sutton and Richard Haighton, who returns to the company after many years, and experience in other Pinter works.

Noel Preston-Jones plays victim Stanley, and the cast is completed by newcomer Lola Skuse as Lulu.

The Birthday Party runs at the Drum from January 12 to 16.

BILL STONE