Is there anyone out there who enjoys their birthday? I mean,actuallyenjoys it?
For most of us, it’s just another day – a sad, morbid marker signifying nothing but our slow procession towards the absolute cessation of our being and the undoing of our bodies. Worst still, birthday parties suck. Just ask Saskia, the hero of Michael Booth’s new production Thirty-Three. For ole Sassy, her birthday shindig is marked not with cake and good times but with anguish and trouble, as the sudden reappearance of a figure from her past sends her life into turmoil.
“Thirty-Three is about a woman named Saskia on the night of her 33rd birthday,” explains Booth, the play’s co-writer and director. “She’s invited a bunch of her closest friends over for a dinner party when out of the blue her younger brother Josh shows up unannounced. She hasn’t seen or heard from him in years and we don’t quite know why he’s there. Then one by one the guests arrive, and they each bring some kind of personal crisis. So they all get into the booze, and the substances, and things spiral out of control and it turns out to be quite a wild night.”
Of course, a play about a group of friends getting firmly sloshed while old tensions rise to the surface is a tale as old as time: that murky theme of ‘past evils’ has haunted everything from Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? to the more surrealist bent of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party. But as far as Booth is concerned, the play is less about the tension the characters find themselves mired in and more about the bonds that put them in the same room in the first place. “The play is about friendship, loyalty, family, growing up, taking responsibility, and balancing that with having a good time,” Booth says simply.
Moreover, Booth argues that the play wasn’t inspired by figures like Albee or Pinter, but by distinctly more cinematic reference points. “If I recall correctly, [the plot] for Thirty-Three was [co-writer] Alistair Powning’s idea,” Booth says. “We wanted to make something for five or six actors. Al had an idea for a ‘party piece’. We are both massive fans of [1983 comedy-drama film] The Big Chill, and I think we both fancied ourselves a couple of Lawrence Kasdans and thought we’d cook up our own all-set-over-a-weekend ensemble drama. Al might disagree with that description. Hi, Al.”
Thirty-Three took a matter of months to write and was first staged to good reviews and reciepts back in 2011. However, Booth wasn’t done with Thirty-Three, and some half a decade later the play began to resurface in his consciousness. “In February this year I was itching to direct something for the Fitz, and I suddenly remembered Thirty-Three and thought, ‘Man that was a good show. It needs another life: I should dust that old script off.’”
Resurrecting the work hasn’t been as easy as one might assume, particularly given that the script had been carefully written with the production’s original cast in mind, designed to fit the eccentricities and character traits of the real life actors filling the roles. But rather than feeling overwhelmed by this particular obstacle, Booth openly embraced it.
“I should point out that this show at the Fitz is a mostly new cast,” he says. “That’s what excited me most about doing the play again. I’ve met and witnessed some incredibly exciting and talented actors in the last five years and I saw this as an opportunity to assemble my dream team.”
Booth’s dream team proved exactly as skilled and prepared as he expected them to be, and the director has nothing but good things to say about his assembled cast. “I’d have to say this is the best cast I’ve ever worked with,” he says. “I was a fan of their theatre work individually before I invited them to be in the show. They’ve built an incredible rapport as an ensemble. Suffice to say, rehearsals are an absolute joy.”
Just as excitingly, not only is Booth’s cast perfect for the work, so is the play’s location. The work is set to be staged on the Fitz’s second floor as part of a new initiative that will see the intimate space hosting handpicked productions perfectly suited to the venue’s vibe. “The Fitz’s second floor is absolutely perfect for Thirty-Three” enthuses Booth, “because the whole thing takes place in someone’s living room. So it’s like the audience are guests in the house. You’re right in the thick of it.”
Ultimately, Thirty-Three’s naturalism, locale and cast are all aligning for a singular purpose: to make the audience forget they’re watching a play, and to wholly immerse themselves in the plight of characters they should feel like they’ve known all their life. Thirty-Three isn’t something removed from reality, or an accessory to our real lives: it’s our own existence thrown back at us.
To that end, Booth’s goals for the play are simultaneously simple and grand. “I want audiences to be wiping the tears from their eyes and holding their aching sides thinking, ‘Holy shit, what was that?’” Booth says. “I want them to feel like they’ve been a part of these people’s lives and I want them to grab a drink in the bar and to argue and discuss and celebrate the magic of life and theatre. I’d like that.”
Thirty-Three runsTuesday September 20 – Saturday October 8, Monday through Saturday, at theOld Fitz Theatre.
