London Classic Theatre: The Caretaker 2010

THE CARETAKER - 2010

By Harold Pinter
Directed by Michael Cabot
Designed by Geraldine Bunzl
Lighting by Peter Foster

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"Once again, London Classic Theatre shines with quality"

Munster Express

"Nicholas Gasson's Davies is magnificent"

Eastern Daily Press

"This superb revival...an engrossing production"

Aberdeen Press & Journal

CAST:

Nicholas Gadd, Nicholas Gasson and Richard Stemp (April - July).

John Dorney, Nicholas Gasson and Richard Stemp (September - November).

SELECTED VENUES:

Theatr Brycheiniog Brecon, Torch Theatre Milford Haven, Winchester Theatre Royal, Buxton Opera House, Gala Theatre Durham, Everyman Palace Cork and Norwich Playhouse.

ALAN HULME - MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS

"Since Pinter’s death two years ago, there have been several in-tribute productions of his most acclaimed plays, but they’ve virtually all been darn sarf because oop north Pinter - Stoppard is another - has never been big box office. Two years on, as distance begins to be put between the man and his plays, can we say yet whether works proclaimed some of the greatest of the 20th century will actually become classics that will be regularly revived years hence?

The Caretaker is central to Pinter’s output. First seen in 1960, it is Pinter-esque in the extreme, in that there’s little plot and nothing much really happens. A man, Aston, brings a much older man, Davies, back to a room owned by Aston’s brother, Mick. Davies, who seems to be homeless, is allowed to stay in the room and become the caretaker. With their various, pathetically limited, aspirations, the three bumble through the days, while we know none of them will achieve their aims and they’ll be lucky to scrape through the lives they have.

London Classic Theatre’s tour is a revival of their production from 2004, though just two of the original cast, Nicholas Gasson and Richard Stemp, return - as Davies and Aston, with John Dorney now as Mick. They are an excellent trio, with Gasson as the cunning leech very effectively latching onto the weaknesses of the pathetically brain-damaged Aston and the superficially quite plausible Mick.

There’s a highly atmospheric cluttered set of piled-up boxes and junk soaring upwards into an attic, by Geraldine Bunzl. Michael Cabot’s direction is precise, but it’s also effectively unobtrusive.

It’s been analysed and dissected ad infinitum. There’s a very unsettling air of menace underlying everything and a black streak of humour, but basically you’re best advised to make of it what you will.

Pinter said: “It’s about two brothers and a caretaker,” and it is.

Whether this is enough to keep audiences coming back for more, on into the future, is another matter. On the evidence to date north of Watford, it’d seem doubtful."

ALAN GEARY - NOTTINGHAM POST

"When he comes on at the start it's as if you can smell Davies's overcoat from the stalls. But it's not just the costumes that make this Caretaker excellent. All the ingredients are in place: the costumes, yes; the squalor of the semi-realistic set; most importantly, the acting.

There's Davies (Nicholas Gasson), whining and manipulative; Aston (Richard Stemp), pathetically neatly dressed, obsessive, walking about the room as if he's clockwork; Mick (John Dorney), a sadistic no-hoper. The papers in Sidcup will stay unsorted out, that shed will stay un-built, and the dump will stay a dump.

Being Pinter, all the time there's that air of menace: when Aston gets behind Davies and tells him he's good with his hands, or during the passing the bag scene, for instance. And there's a lot of the theatre of the absurd: we get the fractured text, the non sequiturs, the failure of communication. Pinter has an ear for the way not just the down-trodden but all of us speak across each other.

The humour lies in incongruities: the pompous dialogue from all three characters, the smoking jacket in a context of squalor, Mick's uncle getting "chucked out of the Salvation Army", or Davies's earthy description of the monks at the monastery near Luton. And there's the way conversation stops when a drop of water from the leaking roof pings into the bucket.

From London Classic Theatre and directed by Michael Cabot, this is a fine production of what might be a great play."

VICTOR HALLETT - THEATRE IN WALES

"One of the great images of Twentieth Century drama is of Davies, the tramp at the centre of The Caretaker, constantly finding reasons, usually bad weather, for not going to Sidcup to collect his papers. There's little chance that they exist to be collected but the repeated promise is one of the things that gives his life shape.

Nicholas Gasson, returning to the role in this revival of London Classic Theatre's 2004 production, raises the querulous inertia to a pitch of wheedling pleading that is truly unnerving. The more he vacillates the more you know that he has attached himself, limpet like, to Aston's squalid bedsit.

The great strength of Michael Cabot's fine production is the realisation that the two brothers are equally incapable of going anywhere. They too are stuck in their impossible, albeit small, dreams. Brain damaged Aston is never going to build his shed, buy any of the interesting things he sees on his walks or indeed finish mending the plug he's always fiddling with.

Richard Stemp, also returning to his role in the earlier tour, gives Aston's voice a quiet, strangulated monotone which invests his utterances with a truly enigmatic strength. He only varies it in the great speech when he reveals his hospital treatment, which is delivered with extraordinary power.

For me the biggest surprise of the production is that John Dorney's would-be tough guy, the fast talking Mick, is terrified of his brother. I don't remember ever seeing it played like that and it adds another level of power play to the household. It's not even as though Aston tries to intimidate Mick, it's simply that by just standing solidly or moving slowly forward he reduces his little brother to a frightened rabbit. It's all the more effective because John Dorney does the brash, confident delivery of all his grandiose schemes so well as he dominates Davies.

There's a wonderfully realised piece of physical business when Davies' bag is passed around the three time after time, very much like the hat in Waiting for Godot.

The production's other impressive aspect is the speaking of the lines. Rhythm, stress and, yes, pauses all come over as naturalistic, it's only the odd juxtapositions, non sequiturs and odd emphases that create that unmistakeable Pinter landscape.

I usually see London Classic Theatre in the intimacy of Mold's studio theatres but I missed this one there and it was remarkable to see it on a theatre main stage, still managing to create the total claustrophobia of Pinter's world. A world, as it should be, of down to earth realism that achieves the poetry of utter unease."

LIAM MURPHY - MUNSTER EXPRESS

"Had to travel to Cork as a guest of the Everyman Palace Theatre, to see the opening night of that wonderful company, London Classic Theatre and their Irish tour of Pinter’s The Caretaker. I’ve enjoyed this company at either Theatre Royal or Garter Lane for years now but sadly this year neither are part of the tour. London Classic have a great reputation and their Artistic Director, Michael Cabot, has an impressive way with the plays they take out on extensive tours. Their last three outings gave us The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Humble Boy and Abigail’s Party.

For this 1960 play, they created a wonderfully compact set to show the squalid place that the strange and passive Aston brings the argumentative tramp-like figure Davies to share a cluttered attic room. Into that no man’s land of dereliction also comes Mick as Aston’s angry brother, a possible small time decorator/builder.

Out of that unlikely trio Pinter wove one of his most unsettling plays and London Classic have in a way sped up the much misunderstood Pinter pauses in the dialogue and still managed to keep the dangerous tension as each character probed the other to achieve an upper hand or confuse the audience.

In a wonderful performance Nicholas Gadd was a prickly Mick, with Richard Stemp as the taciturn but deeply troubled Aston. Nicholas Gasson was excellent as the scheming tramp Davies who has no intention of leaving the house and accepts the curious role of Caretaker.

Once again, London Classic Theatre shines with quality and adds much to a depleted touring scene in Ireland."

ROBERT GIBSON - HEXHAM COURANT

"Ah, The Caretaker... It takes me back to my days studying English at Durham University when, roll-up dangling nonchalantly from mouth, I would saunter around the college bars proclaiming such wisdom as: “Harold Pinter really makes one confront the terror beneath everyday banalities, yah...”.

I was a pretentious idiot, of course. But I knew a good thing when I saw it, and Pinter, Beckett, the Theatre of the Absurd, tragicomedy and all the rest of it struck a chord with me in a way, I confess, that drama hadn’t really done before. Of course, being lazy as well as pretentious, I never actually went to see The Caretaker performed - and last Wednesday I realised what I’d been missing out on.

The renowned London Classic Theatre company, now celebrating its 10th year on tour, was good enough to bring the play to the Queen’s Hall, Hexham, and the rich, vibrant, sometimes hilarious, suddenly terrifying result was way more engaging than any cold analysis of the text.

Richard Stemp was impressive as the kindly but vulnerable Aston, bringing a staccato, blunted edge to the role that is undoubtedly the most complex in the play. Of course, we don’t believe he’ll ever get round to building the shed he talks of, but Stemp’s sympathetic portrayal meant his self-deception became something to pity rather than hold in contempt.

Less appealing was the elderly drifter, Davies, given accommodation by Aston until he gets himself “sorted out”. His famous delusion - that he’ll retrieve his papers from Sidcup as soon as the weather breaks - took on greater and greater poignancy every time it was uttered by actor, Nicholas Gasson, who also did well to illustrate the crushing addiction that is incessant talking. Looked at logically, many of Davies’s utterances are redundant but most act to reassert the power balance in his favour. Gasson had the ability to make us giggle at the most absurd, and to shiver as we noticed the rising undercurrent of violence.

With Aston’s brother, Mick, it’s not so much an undercurrent as a series of huge, crashing waves, interspersed by an eerie calm. Nicholas Gadd was utterly terrifying in the role, which demands a unique talent - the ability to make repeated lines like “How did you sleep?” into horrendous threats. Mick’s character works by drawing the audience in as effectively as Aston and Davies, and it was notable that Gadd’s more poetic passages were rendered with such rhythmic beauty that one could almost forget his faults. Language, in Pinter’s hands, can hypnotise, hurt, impress, destroy, and Gadd had all the acting agility necessary.

Last Wednesday’s performance was also given a tremendous boost with a quality stage set. Aston’s dusty room was suitably claustrophobic, the props arranged to bring out the Laurel and Hardy-esque physical comedy and every detail cleverly arranged to stress the input of the three personalities.

All in all, artistic director Michael Cabot should be proud - The Caretaker was, as he’d hoped, the perfect way to mark a major anniversary."

GRAHAM WILLIAMS - SOUTH WALES EVENING POST

"Anyone who has ever tried to maintain control of a comment thread on Facebook that has gone slightly off-kilter will be familiar with the concept of the non sequitur, the device whereby random and irrelevant sentences are thrown into the conversational mix, often to the extent where it is impossible to follow what is going on.

It is a technique that was mastered by playwright Harold Pinter decades before the dawn of the internet, and nowhere is it used to stronger effect than in The Caretaker. For anyone unaccustomed to Pinter's idiosyncratic style, this excellent production from London Classic Theatre was as good a place as any to start.

The story revolves around Davies (Nicholas Gasson), a vagrant who also goes under the name of Jenkins. Down on his luck, he has been taken under the wing of Aston (Richard Stemp), a man who is psychologically damaged and who offers Davies a bed and a roof over his head. The tension escalates when Aston's thuggish but articulate brother Mick (Nicholas Gadd) enters the fray.

In approaching Pinter, many people - myself included - have made the mistake of looking for meanings and messages where none exist, and there are certainly instances in this play where it is possible to draw parallels with today's xenophobic climate; but to do so would be missing the point.

This was an immensely satisfying production in which the superb performances were matched by high technical standards. By far the most effective interpretation of Pinter's work that I have ever seen and the reaction from the audience demonstrated that there is a huge appetite among the theatre-going public for high quality drama."

RACHEL ANDREWS - SUNDAY BUSINESS POST

"Touring company London Classic Theatre celebrates its tenth year in existence with a strong production of one of Harold Pinter’s most resonant plays. It is the second time around for LCT, which first staged the drama six years ago, and the reprise benefits from an obvious affinity for, and understanding of, the work; the production is clear, focused and restrained.

Pinter wrote The Caretaker in 1960 and it has stood the test of time, opening up to a variety of interpretations throughout the years. Terence Rattigan described it as a religious parable, while Kenneth Tynan considered it a study of the id, ego and superego. A recent production in Liverpool, starring Jonathan Pryce, defined the homeless man at the centre of the play - whose identity and background remain shifting and illusory throughout - as being specifically Welsh.

In this case, director Michael Cabot attempts no particular illuminations, allowing the play itself to emerge from a deliberate and still production that heightens the isolation and the threat overhanging the drama: each of the three characters remains contained in a separate world, while the violence is all the more powerful because of the infrequency and potency of its eruptions.

As with all of Pinter’s work, The Caretaker has less to do with plot than with larger considerations about human beings and, in that, the acting takes on significant import. Here, the three actors approach their roles with care.

Nicholas Gadd as landlord Mick moves loosely about the stage, casually inflicting violence on homeless man Davies (Nicholas Gasson), whom Aston (Richard Stemp), Mick’s brother and tenant in his dilapidated flat, has asked to stay. Mick later attempts to manipulate the hobo into taking his side. Despite this, Gadd imbues his character with enough vulnerability so that we believe his eventual rapprochement with his brother. His power was never more than illusory.

Meanwhile, Stemp, playing the gentle, mentally-challenged Aston, gives his character a quiet dignity. Stemp talks and walks with a stiffness that turns to steel at the end. ‘‘I think it’s about time you found somewhere else. I don’t think we’re hitting it off," he tells the tramp after Davies abuses him for his mental difficulties.

Gasson, in the important central role, captures effectively his character’s contradictions, moving from pleading to pridefulness in an instant, rejecting Aston’s offers of a new pair of shoes, but humbled into surprise when he is told he can stay in the flat on his own. He is an ambiguous, self-deceiving character, revealing early on that the name he goes by is an assumed one, and gradually showing himself as a bully who blames other people for his problems.

Geraldine Bunzl’s claustrophobic set reflects the cluttered minds within its walls: the characters’ dreams are those of delusions, they battle vainly for power, their struggle unceasing."

RODDY PHILLIPS - ABERDEEN PRESS & JOURNAL

"In its heyday the Lemon Tree in Aberdeen built a considerable reputation for hosting serious, high-quality drama in its theatre studio, attracting cutting-edge theatre companies with challenging productions. Now the Lemon Tree is being run by Aberdeen Performing Arts it looks like it is back on the right track.

Last night's sell-out performance of Pinter's The Caretaker by London Classic Theatre is a good example of the standard of drama now on offer. LCT produced The Caretaker in 2004 and this superb revival, directed by Michael Cabot, is the centrepiece of its 10th anniversary year. The play focuses on Davies, an elderly drifter, played here by the brilliant Nicholas Gasson, who is given shelter by the vulnerable Aston, played to hair-raising perfection by Richard Stemp. An uneasy peace is fractured by the arrival of Mick, Aston's quick-witted younger brother, played by a decidedly menacing Nicholas Gadd. An unsettling power game ensues among Geraldine Bunzl's beautifully detailed, derelict set.

This engrossing production transported the audience to Pinter-land, a world alarmingly close to our own, yet reassuringly different. The wonderful oblique language was all there and the trio of characters, bold with the pulse of rude life, revelled in the grim humour. Fifty years on, in the hands of such talent, Pinter's classic still has the power to disturb at root level."

HELEN BROWN - THE NORTHERN ECHO

"Fifty years on, Harold Pinter’s play The Caretaker still has the power to unsettle the mind. Nothing much happens after Aston rescues Davies, a dishevelled old vagrant, from an argument in a cafe and brings him to his shabby house in North-East London.

There’s no plot to speak of, but an intense power game begins as Davies makes himself at home and begins to assert himself over the kindly but vulnerable Aston. The uneasy peace is shattered with the arrival of Mick (Nicholas Gadd), Aston’s streetwise younger brother.

Three men are each trapped in their own inescapable loneliness. Davies (Nicholas Gasson) rants about finding his identity, bemoaning that everything will be okay when he can get to Sidcup to recover his papers. But he hasn’t got shoes, or it’s raining, and the excuses keep on coming. Richard Stemp gives Aston a beautifully understated character, whose monosyllabic conversation gives way in a fabulous monologue where he reveals the horror of his electroconvulsive therapy treatment.

The world of The Caretaker is a bleak one. All of its characters are damaged. They are all going to survive, but on their relentless journey they show a frenetic vitality and a wry sense of the ridiculous that without a single smile makes their tragedy funny."

HUGH HOMAN - THE STAGE

"Fifty years on and Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker still has the power to unsettle. Nothing much happens after Aston rescues Davies from a brawl and allows him to stay in the derelict house which turns out to be owned by his brother, Mick. It’s the weird power game between these characters who live in their separate no-man’s-land that continues to exert its fascination.

Nicholas Gasson as Davies, Nicholas Gadd as Mick and Richard Stemp as Aston permeate the atmospheric set provided by designer Geraldine Bunzl. All piled boxes, ancient blankets, derelict gas stoves and dusty corners, it towers over and around the trio who hardly notice how depressing and awful it is. Each wants to leave but each knows subconsciously that they’re unable to muster the required energy and willpower to effect change.

The tramp Davies who wants to get back to Sidcup to collect his ‘papers’ is excellently performed by Gasson. At first, downtrodden by Mick, he manages the transformation to persecutor very impressively when he learns of Aston’s undefined mental problems. Stemp in a low-key, understated performance is convincing as the wistful, gentle but ineffective Aston. He flares up but once and it’s a memorable moment. Gadd is menacingly flash as Mick. He relishes his hold over both men but is nevertheless vulnerable too."

CHRIS TRACY - EASTERN DAILY PRESS

"It is 50 years since The Caretaker catapulted Harold Pinter into the front rank of 20th century dramatists. A grimly humorous study of power and isolation, London Classic Theatre's revival of their 2004 production is the centrepiece of the company's tenth anniversary year.

Leading dingy lives in a derelict house, two brothers are sustained by thoughts of the future. Quiet, damaged Aston plans to tame the garden and build a shed, while canny small-time builder Mick hopes to transform the place into a smart bachelor pad. When Aston offers a bed to feckless tramp Davies, the scene is set for a tortuous battle of wits.

Director Michael Cabot gets strong performances from a cast up to the challenge of conveying the complex emotions underlying Pinter's dialogue. Part Alf Garnett-like bigot, part washed-up music hall comedian, Nicholas Gasson's Davies is magnificent - by turns coarse, prissy and vindictive. Equally impressive is Nicholas Gadd as Mick. Whether rhapsodising about his plans for the house or expressing the pent-up frustration of a man who finds himself effectively in the role of carer for his older brother, his genuine menace and savvy are shot through with a touching vulnerability."

MIKE ALLEN - PORTSMOUTH TODAY

"Fifty years after the premiere of The Caretaker, London Classic Theatre's revival is timely. The play is the story of a mysterious vagrant called Davies who seeks to become anything anyone wants him to be, and in the process becomes thoroughly despicable - a victim who victimises others.

Nicholas Gasson encompasses the full range of the character, from grudging gratitude to overt racism, from cringing subservience to barely suppressed aggression, and all this with the barest hint of faded gentrification in his rough voice.

With hardly less potent performances from Nicholas Gadd as Mick and Richard Stemp as Aston, this is a compelling production."

ANNE MORLEY-PRIESTMAN - WHATSONSTAGE.COM ****

"There was a time when the plays of Harold Pinter were considered to be ‘difficult’ for ordinary theatre-goers. Fifty years after the first production of The Caretaker, its elliptical dialogue and the shifting relationships of its three characters seems quite natural and perfectly clear. Davies, Aston and Mick may be in the quicksand but we - the audience - are safely on the promontory with a perfect oversight of the drama beneath us.

Michael Cabot’s new touring production for London Classic Theatre marks both the play’s half-centenary and the completion of the company’s first decade. It is strongly cast with Nicholas Gasson dominating as the tramp Davies and Richard Stemp as Aston making much of his monologue detailing the electrical shock treatment meted out almost as standard for those unfortunate enough to be diagnosed with psychiatric problems in the years immediately after the Second World War.

Menace is contained within all three characters, here made most active in Nicholas Gadd’s Mick. The balance between day-dream and legitimate aspiration, wishful thinking and concrete achievement (which is at the core of all three men) is fully demonstrated. Geraldine Bunzl’s set is a complex of cluttered space dusted in shades of dingy brown. The world outside, representing both escape and entrapment, is lightly drawn but ever present; trains rattle past the broken window, rainwater plops through the ceiling into a bucket, a vacuum-cleaner whirls itself into a potential weapon."

LONDON CLASSIC THEATRE, THE PRODUCTION OFFICE, 63 SHIRLEY AVENUE, SUTTON, SURREY, SM1 3QT
TELEPHONE: 020 8395 2095 EMAIL: INFO@LONDONCLASSICTHEATRE.CO.UK