The Caretaker, the 1960 play that became Harold Pinter's first major success, still sounds – or perhaps again sounds – curiously modern. I say "again" because of the retro-style shows and revivals dominating Broadway, against which Pinter's non-realistic, half-absurdist, yet nonetheless deeply felt situations and dialogue seem fresh, or freshly burnished. BAM has been a pretty good place to get one's "modern" theater fix, and Pinter's great early work has held up well after more than half a century, particularly in this accomplished imported-from-Britain production starring Jonathan Pryce.
Jonathan Pryce in The Caretaker. Photo by Shane Reid.
Right at the top I should say that some of the sly air of mystery hanging about Christopher Morahan's staging might come from the British accents, particularly that of Pryce's gruff tramp, who does a fair amount of barking and whining which, combined with the accent, can make some lines difficult to understand via these American ears. In fact, and maybe this is just a personal weakness of mine, it often takes me a while to "settle in" to a play's British accents before I start to comprehend most of the lines.
My 10 or 15 minutes of frustration mellowed into rapt enjoyment as the evening moved along. As the play begins, the lonesome sound of a train goes by, and a tough-looking figure strides about a decrepit room full of upended drawers, boxes of junk, dust, and (we easily imagine) drafts. The un-introduced young man leaves just as another man, Aston (the excellent Alan Cox), arrives with old Davies, whom he has rescued from a fracas.
Plays are often touched off by an outlander – either a long-absent family member or, as here, a real stranger – arriving in a household and bringing submerged stresses to the surface. Part of Pinter's brilliance has been to turn such commonplaces belly-up. This is no normal household, and Davies, which he insists isn't his real name, no common interloper.
The house turns out to be owned by Aston's brother Mick (the edgy and funny Alex Hassell). Mick puts up Aston protectively in the wake of Aston's traumatic treatment for psychological problems. But why Aston in turn takes in Davies, gives him keys, and even clears the junk off his spare bed is intriguingly unclear – is he a simplistically trusting soul, as a character with a mental illness might have been rendered by some playwrights? It seems that way at times, but the suspicion lurks in us that nothing is that simplistic here, and there are certainly no heroes or villains, though in a painfully raw scene Aston convinces us (if no one else) that he has indeed been a kind of victim. So perhaps it's fellow-feeling that induced him to rescue Davies from the bar fight, but there are no easy answers.
Article comments
1 - Charles Haas
It certainly made for a thought provoking evening. Take a look at my own review. An excerpt follows:
"There should be a special circle of hell devoted to theatregoers who are unwilling to wait five minutes after a performance has ended to give the actors their due, because they must be the first ones to the taxis and their cars, as if the actors were trained monkeys who existed only from curtain to curtain for their wearied amusement. This kind of oafish behavior is especially galling after a performance as fine as the one I saw Thursday night at BAM in the Theatre Royal Bath's production of Harold Pinter's The Cartetaker, which aside from the persons of great distinction heading to their vehicles to clog the atmosphere, received a well-deserved standing ovation from the rest of us."