The Caretaker

I have fond memories of "The Caretaker".

Cunning Plan did a touring production with Steve Foden as Mick, David Penrose as Aston and myself as Davies. There are two abiding memories of that production. One is carrying a gas cooker with Steve up several flights of stairs at Brockenhurst College to the performance venue. (David Penrose, at the end of the run, discovered that we could have taken the gubbins out and just used the shell, which would have made it a hundred times lighter to carry up those stairs!)

The second abiding memory is of David's performance as Aston. I was privileged to be onstage as Davies every performance and observe the layers David built into an extraordinary characterisation. Later David reprised the role in the Bench production of The Caretaker. If anything the characterisation was richer and deeper. David is brilliant at dead pan delivery but the moment of terror he introduced when Aston is describing his experiences at the hands of the doctors in what the audience assumes is a mental hospital was enough to send shivers down the spine. He had intellectualised that moment but now he, and consequently we, also felt it. The confrontation between Aston and the smelly, noisy Davies, when the former wants to evict the latter, was redolent with threatened violence. You could see, in David's performance, a possible reason, a propensity for violence perhaps that had been subdued/ removed, as to why Aston had had to undergo the treatment he so graphically describes. The room, which was cluttered with rubbish, suddenly had the potential to furnish this large and disturbed/disturbing man with all the weaponry he might need to oust his unwanted guest.

On Friday I went to see a performance of The Caretaker by Jackson and Hill Productions C.I.C. at the Arts Centre.

This was a company who had hired the theatre as a venue to show their work. The company is four young men who were part of the Chichester Festival Youth Theatre but are now branching out on their own.

The set was well made with a solid door USR and a back wall with a window covered by sacking against which were pressed the two beds. When the scene opens the SR bed, which will eventually become Davies', is covered in an eclectic collection of boxes, household furniture, suitcases and a gas cooker with a buddha sitting on top. SR and SL the stage is covered with more items and the makings of a garden shed collected together by the owner of the room, Aston. This clutter was both decorative and used well during the performance. However the overwhelming impression was of new wood and an intrinsic tidiness rather than the smells of old, forgotten newspapers nibbled by rodents and the smells of human bodies mixed with damp and rot. What was missing was the sense of accumulated layers of a man's life.

Hugo Jackson, an excellent actor in his early twenties I would estimate, gave a very good and detailed performance of Davies, the homeless vagrant brought in off the streets for the night by Aston, and who becomes the eponymous caretaker of this ramshackle dwelling with its other rooms which will remain uninhabitable apparently until Aston finishes building his shed in the garden. Aston was played well by the tall and slim James Price. He caught the slow speech of a man trying to think through thoughts and reactions with what we assume is a damaged brain but a good heart. The two strike up a relationship of sorts and Davies seems to have wheedled his way into the house and Aston's life. Things are looking up for the old man. However there is a serpent in every paradise and in The Caretaker that is Aston's brother, Mick. Played at pace with great gusto by Chris Levens, Mick brings an air of menace but also great humour into the piece.

I enjoyed the evening and I think the cast have the talent to do well. The director, Daniel Hill, a youthful contemporary of the actors, certainly knows how to keep the action moving and wasn't afraid to inform the famous Pinter pauses with business. All the set pieces were achieved with style and elan.

The speech by Aston (James Price), which I watched David perform many times, perhaps summed up what I felt was missing from the production. For a start Aston sat on his bed (SL) as directed by the playwright and the surrounding lights dimmed to a virtual spotlight. However the actor was sat in profile and unless there is a reason for doing this, i.e. downstage bathed in light but upstage in darkness, which gives an eerie out of body feel to the visual picture, this limits drastically the impact the actor can make. James delivered the speech well but he didn't make the hairs on the back of your neck rise as they should at the outrages committed against this fellow human being. He couldn't because he was too young - you just couldn't believe that he had ever experienced such an assault on his body, mind and dignity as Aston describes. James gave a good performance of the speech but couldn't provide the layers of living needed to make it convincing that we could believe it had happened to him.

The same applies to Hugo Jackson , who gave a clever, detailed performance full of nuances, but who just wasn't an old battered smelly man with whom we feel sympathy on occasions but wouldn't want to allow into our comfortable lives.

Chris Levens as Mick was playing a character who is probably more in line with his actual age. There were touches of Del Boy in his vocal delivery and the stiff tense angle at which he held his neck worked in conveying the rage which seems to percolate at the heart of this character. When played by Steve Foden to David's Aston, Mick seemed the younger brother trapped by an older sibling with difficulties and who might under different circumstances have flown free of this broken backed existence. In this performance, Mick seemed more like the older brother, defensive of his sibling, and Mick's inability to make something of his life did seem to stem from the fact that the mental instability may have been a family trait. The performance for me owed more to Joe Orton than Pinter, the leather coated Ruffian on the stairs.

What the performance did do though was remind me how brilliant Pinter the playwright is and that is great credit to the young and talented company of Jackson and Hill Productions.