Review: The Caretaker - The Jewish Chronicle

Harold Pinter's 1960 play often provokes the question among its audiences: "Just what is it all about". Anyone expecting a simple answer will be disappointed.

This absurdist drama - a seminal work in the Pinter canon - remains obstinately resistant to interpretation. Is it about loneliness or power, unfulfilled dreams or the generally depressing awfulness of life? Or maybe all of those things?

It occupies the same dramatic space as Beckett's Waiting for Godot, in which two characters spend the entire play awaiting the arrival of a third. Here we have three characters waiting for nothing in particular. And while they wait, almost nothing happens.

In true Pinter style, there are pregnant pauses and long silences. Which are followed by extended periods of quiet contemplation. The dialogue goes round in ever-decreasing circles, and the characters appear quite deranged.

It is an engaging combination, especially in this touring production by the London Classic Theatre, which boasts strong performances and sensitive direction on a stage dominated by a junk-filled attic, where all the action takes place. Or fails to take place.

What comes across again and again is a failure to communicate

Nicholas Gasson, with his popping eyes, marvellously expressive face and gift for mime, is Davies, a drifter in every sense. He lives as a tramp, has a fluid approach to truth and is, by turns, scheming and pathetic. Richard Stemp plays the timid and troubled Aston, scarred forever by electric shock therapy. He offers shelter to Davies after a brawl in a cafe. In one of the most moving - and coherent - scenes, he delivers a monologue on the traumas he suffered at a psychiatric hospital.

His brother Mick, played by John Dorney, is a volatile character, animated when engaged in the minute detail of his interior decor plans, silent and menacing the rest of the time.

All three are trapped in small, miserable worlds, but they all have their dreams.

Davies believes that retrieving his "papers from Sidcup" will relieve the doubts he has about his identity, Mick has grand plans for the dilapidated house, and Aston meticulously designs the shed he will never build.

What comes across again and again is a failure to communicate. Three men occupy the same room, but understand virtually nothing of each other.

There is an obsession with trivia - bus routes, the importance of a good pair of shoes or a decent clock - coupled with a reluctance to address issues of real importance, such as where their lives are going.

Director Michael Cabot has created something that is occasionally funny, ultimately unsettling, but compelling. This is his second go at the The Caretaker. He directed a production with the same company in 2004. But he says he is still peeling away the layers of what he admits remains a "stubborn and secretive" play.

Little wonder, then, that The Caretaker is a favourite set text in so many schools. Although judging by the stunned silence at the end, it may be a while since some of the audience had read it.

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