They say there are no plays for the right, but Harold Pinter’s “The Caretaker” is one George Bush might even cheer.
That is, if he can understand it – and that’s no offense to the prez. Britain’s new Nobel laureate creates murky, absurd worlds that are challenging and disorienting to anyone.
More is communicated off the Pinter page than on it, so “scholars” can’t resist filling in the gaps with their own meanings and metaphors as the author sits back and smirks, insisting his plays are nothing more than what they appear to be.
With apologies to Pinter, “The Caretaker,” now being tantalizingly staged by the Paragon Theatre Company, is rife for modern political interpretation, even 46 years after its birth.
On the surface, we have brothers representing absolute power and foolish compassion. Our setting is a cluttered, run-down London house owned by Mick, the majority power (the right, if you will). Aston, the sole tenant, has some say but no authority to set policy (the left). Enter the downtrodden – a filthy old vagrant with so many names that he is every homeless man (the needy, unwashed masses?).
As the play opens, Aston has opened his room to this wretch. Why? We’re never told. There is no expectation of rent; or that he get on his feet as quickly as possible and then use them to get out. While Mick is a brute, quick-tempered and suspicious, Aston’s charitable instinct makes him a meek patsy.
Our pretentious tramp is greedy and racist, the personification of righteous entitlement. He accepts his free room but is impossible to please. He wants new shoes. He complains. He shows no motivation or gratitude. He plays the brothers against one another. Each offers him a job as caretaker of this neglected tomb, but he has no job skills or interest. He is the worst kind of welfare slacker – a poster child for social reform. The right may now applaud.
Pinter would scoff at the specificity of these comparisons. He keeps his dialogue vague, his situations anonymous. His antagonists are intentionally nameless and show no motivation for their cruelty. Pinter might say this is not a tale of right versus left but dominance versus subservience. Still, he has earned his reputation, as a new biography describes, as “a permanent public nuisance.”
With three acts and two intermissions, “The Caretaker” demands audience focus, and in unsure hands its performance might be deadly. Director Terry Dodd’s staging is certainly alive, thanks to the understated Warren Sherrill (Aston) and the veteran Jim Hunt (the tramp). Hunt, as external as Sherrill is internal, is riveting. He darts between primal menace and old-school liberal whining. He exudes patience one moment, violent paranoia the next.
Jarrad Holbrook has Mick’s intensity cold, but is less sure navigating choppy Pinter waters that demand simultaneous confusion and clarification. David Lafont’s detailed set seems to have reduced the whole of modern materialism into this one, claustrophobic junkyard of a room.
A piece of advice for Paragon: Heed the axiom, “Pinter in winter!” This is one of his longer plays, and the Phoenix Theatre’s poor ventilation makes it more of a challenge than it need be.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
“The Caretaker” | *** RATING
DRAMA|Presented by Paragon Theatre Company| Written by Harold Pinter|At the Phoenix Theatre, 1124 Santa Fe Drive| THROUGH JULY 1|7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays|2 hours and 30 minutes, two intermissions|$15-$19 (2-for-1 Thurs-
days)|303-300- 2210 or paragon theatre.com
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-John Moore
