What: The Caretaker
Where: Roxy Theatre
When: To May 7
Rating: 4 1/2 stars (out of five)
A new production of The Caretaker is powerful, disturbing, shocking and often laugh-out-loud hilarious. In other words, it’s everything one would hope a Harold Pinter classic could be.
Staged by Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre, this absurdist drama portrays three profoundly damaged men stuck in a bizarro-world quagmire. Each harbours dreams and ambitions, yet all are rendered immobile, like insects stuck to flypaper, ensnared in some hellish stasis.
Aston (R.J. Peters) has invited a tramp called Davies (Paul Fauteux) to bunk in his rundown London flat. Indeed, Aston has rescued Davies, who was about to be beaten and has lost his worldly belongings.
The hobo is initially grateful; however, in the days that follow, his demands grow increasingly imperious. Davies complains about drafts in the flat and even finds fault with the shoes Aston gives him (the shoes are black, but the laces are brown). Tellingly, when Aston presents Davies with a royal-red smoking jacket, Fauteux — in a hilarious turn — preens about waving his pipe in an imitation of a rich man. Any hope of domestic peace is disrupted by Mick, Aston’s brother and the building’s owner. Mick surprises Davies, who’s alone in the flat and rummaging through Aston’s belongings.
Played by the imposing Lindsay Robinson in a leather jacket, Mick flings the tramp to the floor and plants his boot on his chest. He proceeds to tease Davies in the manner of a cat who’s caught a mouse. Mick deems him a barbarian and an “old skate,” then asks if the tramp would care to rent the top storey of the house for a small fortune. “Say the word,” says Mick, “and I’ll have my solicitors draft you out a contract.”
This is an example of Pinter’s so-called comedy of menace. Such humour is rooted in absurdity — later on, Mick castigates Davies for not being a top-flight interior decorator (the tramp has made no such claim). It’s darkly funny, yet throughout one senses Mick is a hair’s breadth away from pummelling the new tenant.
Aston, meanwhile, is a lost soul who daydreams about fixing up the place, but never gets around to it. In a climactic monologue (delivered by Peters with wonderful humanity on Thursday night) Aston reveals what’s wrong with him. He suffered mental problems, was taken to a hospital and underwent horrific electroshock therapy.
In a fine performance, Peters made his character the living manifestation of a hapless victim chewed up and spat out by society — his Aston is sweetly puzzled, tongue-tied, with a hint of a stutter. It’s less apparent how Mick and Davies became so damaged. Well played by Fauteux with heightened brio, Davies is a Beckett-like clown, a societal castoff so traumatized by life he’s merely the nub of a human being. Robinson — who looks like a 1950s biker — did an excellent job of capturing Mick’s intimidating physicality and bully-boy humour. His over-the-top, curiously erotic description of how he intended to decorate the flat was a highlight of the evening.
Patrick Du Wors’ evocative set looks like wooden crates haphazardly tacked together. The action is deftly supported by Hank Pine’s noirish soundtrack: tinkling piano riffs, strange humming and buzzes.
It’s certainly a bleak world, yet The Caretaker is surprisingly funny. The audience laughed loudly and often. Pinter’s humour is defiantly absurdist: Davies insists striped shirts are warmer than checked ones; Mick reminisces about an uncle who “married a Chinaman and went to Jamaica.”
This is a long play, topping three hours with two intermissions. Happily, director Jacob Richmond has taken pains to ensure we’re entertained. The balance between laughs and danger keeps us continually on edge. Pinter’s frequent use of pauses and silences, so integral to the play, never seems arbitrary or slows down the action.
Simple and brutally elegant, The Caretaker leaves us with much to ponder. Pinter examines family relationships, power and class struggles, human isolation and our failure to truly communicate. It’s a compelling, thought-provoking production well worth seeking out.