Harold Pinter’s black comedy creates a masterly web of menace from a single charitable act. Brain-damaged Aston (Keith Woodason) takes in a stinking vagrant Davies (Owen Garmon). Aston’s brother – Sean Kearney’s worldy-wise and violent Mick – can detect a victim a mile off and sadistically torments the elderly tramp.
Superbly crafted by director Dave Bond for the Torch Theatre Company, the tension between the three actors is electric.
Kearney is in total command as the calculating, self-contained Mick – physically and verbally aggressive, subject to violent mood swings. He is mesmerising as he lies in wait in pitch darkness for the old man, then charges him with a vacuum cleaner.
As the quietly-spoken Aston, Woodason sombrely struggles to keep his thoughts together, explaining matter of factly how he came to be given electric shock treatment for ‘talking too much’.
Davies also talks too much but suspects no one is listening to his hectoring. Welsh-speaking Garmon portrays him convincingly as a man of mystery, querulous, selfish, ingratiating, always ‘a little bit short [of money] until I get sorted out’.
But Davies can be dangerous when cornered – clever lighting by designer Elanor Higgins is so effective that Davies’ knife gleams with menace on the darkened stage. The set – a squalid London bedsit designed by Sean Crowley – is part of the story.
Who is the landlord and who is the tenant? Who will be the caretaker and are any of the dysfunctional trio who they say they are?
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