WHERE TALK IS JUST FOR HIDING TRUTH
Language becomes a weapon when a tramp moves in with two brothers in this brilliantly staged Pinter drama
Where were you born?’ asks Aston. ‘What do you mean?’ replies the tramp. That reply is ridiculous, funny and typical of the way language is used by characters in The
Caretaker. Talk is for hiding what you think, not to give information.
Language becomes a weapon in an undeclared war of domination involving insecure characters trying to undermine each other.
The scene is a junk-laden room in a house in London, where brothers Aston and Mick live. The brain-damaged Aston brings the raggedly dressed Davies in from the street to shelter him.
The ungrateful Davies exploits Aston’s good nature to inveigle himself into being accepted as a lodger and then attempts to undermine the relationship between Aston and his brother Mick. The power play really kicks in whenever Mick confronts Davies, using the tramp’s paranoia and duplicity to reassure, then snare him.
The two brothers rarely speak, but their silent by-play with Davies’s bag neatly shows the communication between them.
Davies is a pathetic, scheming, transparent liar. As played by Michael Feast he prowls the room as a rat-like scavenger, full of selfpity and preposterous posturing, ready to pounce on any weakness.
Garrett Lombard as Mick oozes menace and a sadistic pleasure in his dealings with Davies. His long speeches about London, and his grandiose plans for the house are an amusing and an oblique way of showing Davies who is boss.
The role of the quiet, apparently simple Aston, is played by Marty Rea, playing against his usual exuberance, and he delivers a long speech that shows Aston as a strong-willed, intelligent man, but whose future plans are way beyond his physical abilities.
As unlikely, in fact, as Davies’s oft-repeated pie-in-the-sky hogwash about renewing himself by getting some documents from Sidcup. There are more possibilities for humour in the script than were apparent on opening night, although the play gets progressively darker. The ending is chillingly bleak. It’s a work that’s open to all kinds of interpretation but going in for too much symbolism could turn these vivid characters into mere puppets. This meticulously crafted and absorbing production may make you think, but i t won’t disappoint.
A pathetic liar, he prowls the room as a rat-like scavenger