[usr 4]
The great British playwright Harold Pinter’s 1960 play THE CARETAKER is one of his most performed plays. It is a play that I have seen a number of times over the years.
The setting is a ramshackle flat in London. The play is a three-hander.
Anthony Gooley plays the quietly spoken, timid, troubled Aston who lives by himself in the disheveled flat. Aston suffers from mental illness. We learn later that his brother Mick has set him up in it to help him out.
The backstory to the play is that Aston has spent the night at a local pub. He saw this homeless guy Davies get into a bar fight in which he ran the risk of getting a terrible beating. Aston rescues him and invites him back to his flat. Though Davies behaves obnoxiously Aston invites him to stay until his situation improves. Daniel Gilshenan plays Davies.
It is morning and Aston decides that he will go out for a while. He tells him that Davies is welcome to stay in the flat without him being around. As soon as Aston has gone Davies rummages through his possessions to try and find any valuables.
Davies is making himself very comfortable when, in through the door, storms Mick who, believing he is an intruder, wrestles him to the ground and aggressively berates him. Henry Nixon plays Mick.
What ensues is a battle of wills between the three characters. The play never leaves the claustrophobic confines of Aston’s living room.
Pinter’s plays are open to countless interpretations. What is THE CARETAKER about?! Veteran director Ian Sinclair, so good in getting every nuance out of classic dramas, writes in his program note that, “Also lurking in the wide gap between Pinter’s text and subtext is a joke wrapped in an unmistakable sense of threat, most particularly the threat of being tagged with an identity.”
The play is also about its portrayal of three anti-social misfits who are simply unable to have any decent communication with each other; they are so insecure, self focused and self deceiving.
There is humour in the play but it is too dark to really engage with it. There is a skit where the three characters playfully wrestle over a bag that Aston brings back to the flat. It is reminiscent in style to some of Samuel Beckett’s quirkier scenes.
Sinclair helms a very good production. Veronique Benett’s finely detailed set and good costume choices work well, and there are some great lighting touches by Matt Cox.
The acting is superb.
Darren Gilshenan who has been in many mainstage productions, my favourite being his performance as the narrator in the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Thornton Wilder’s OUR TOWN, is excellent as Davies. What a sad figure Davies is. So wanting to belong, he is left cut out. His snooty, petulant attitude is self defeating. It is a great role and Gilshenan makes the most of it.
Anthony Gooley has a much less showy role as Aston. Gooley gives an appropriately understated performance as the quiet, damaged, withdrawn Aston who has extended the hand of friendship to Davies only to take it away when he finds him too cantankerous and difficult to contend with. He is left with his grand plan to build a garden shed.
Henry Nixon is great as the manic, menacing Mick who loves his brother, and will never be there for Davies in the way that Davies needs him to be.
There is good reason why we go back to the classics. It is because they continue to speak to us in such an uncanny and authentic way.
THE CARETAKER is now playing at the Ensemble Theatre, 78 McDougall Street, Kirribilli until the 19th November 2022.
Production photography by Prudence Upton.