Seattleplays.com review By Tom Scanlon
			The Birthday Party Capitol Hill Arts Center closes July 8
The theater is for suffering. Writers must gnash their teeth and plumb their souls, to give truth to characters and situations. Directors must tear at their hair, frantic to get the performance just right. Actors must work and work and work, surrendering themselves completely to their characters, repeating lines countless times . . . .      CHAC – the Capitol Hill Arts Center – takes it one step further: Suffer, audience, suffer!      Why should the artists be the only ones who pay a heavy price for theater?      Several theaters around Seattle get quite warm in the summer, but the beast is the CHAC, a hotbox of a theater that suggests the outer reaches of hell, or, perhaps Spokane. Neither of those two have the kind of theater that has gone on here, though . . .      A few fans might make a difference, but, no, no, that would be too easy on the audience. CHAC makes its crowd sit in stifling heat, sans air conditioning . . .on many nights, it is audience Darwinism, only the strongest can survive.      During a recent performance of The Birthday Party, nearly a third of the crowd was madly fanning themselves with programs . . .printing programs on actual fans might have been amusing.      Heat aside, the production of this Pinter gem was an utter delight, once it got rolling (a little sluggish in the first minutes).       Director John Abramson -- one of Seattle's best -- shapes an intense, smart retelling of the four-decades-old Pinter play, which is as sinister and deviously entertaining as when it was first produced . . . when done properly. Here, it is crafted with sharp perfection.       Shellie Shulkin, seeming to be right out of a BBC comedy, is an absolute delight as the ditzy Meg, bored middle-age-wife and caretaker of a snoozy boarding house. Her only tenant is Stanley, played with remarkable energy by Erich Tisa, who at times seems to be channeling Brando’s Stanley.              Not sure why Karl Keff isn’t playing villains in Hollywood flicks. Anyway, he is terrific here, as the verbose, sinister Goldberg.        Chris Macdonald and Emily Chisholm also do nicely in supporting roles, he as Goldberg’s muscle man, she as a lust-crazed neighbor. . . . .       This viewer came dressed for the beach: T-shirt, shorts and flip flops. Yet after two wonderful acts, I surrendered, and fled into the cool of the night, ditching hot Pinter for a cold pint . . .
						The play closes July 8, how about the theater itself? A Pinter-esque message in the program from artistic director Matthew Kwatinetz acknowledges that CHAC is . . . closing? Changing from for-profit to non-profit? Moving? ". . . Please stay in touch over the summer as we announce our forthcoming plans -- all I will say now is that they are as daring and innovative as you might hope . . ."