| An authentically depressing production |
At the Torch |
| Torch Theatre- The Caretaker , Sherman Theatre, Cardiff , March 9, 2002 |
| Last night I realised that what is needed in Theatres is a row of phlegm collection buckets just outside the auditorium so that the entire audience can cough up their guts and tickles before settling down to watch the performance. A large percentage of the audience at Torch Theatre’s production of Pinter’s ‘The Caretaker’ seemed so uncomfortable with the awkward silences onstage they felt it necessary to fill in the gaps themselves with irritatingly unnecessary nervous coughs ricocheting in a chain reaction around the space. March isn’t usually a month for cold & cough epidemics so forgive my lack of sympathy. When they were quiet and the performers recovered my attention I found the contradictory characters very interesting! Davies, the old tramp fellow, remarkably quick to make himself feel at home in Aston’s flat, was essentially unpleasant and annoying. But you couldn’t hate him for it – he was more an ignorant, cantankerous old man who thought the world owed him, than an active bigot. He seemed to almost enjoy prolonging the agony of his problems, making things worse for himself by being outrageously fussy for a man not in a position to choose. Never satisfied, he was sometimes amusing. Another predominantly horrible character is Mick, brother of Aston. He seemed altogether more sinister at first, intimidating and teasing Davies, in his sharp suit and often silent, threatening persona. He accuses Davies of being violent, erratic and completely unpredictable, all of which are traits more true of himself and his somewhat cruel behaviour towards the old man – taunting him in the darkness with light-bulb attached to the Hoover. Mick also accuses him of lying, but he was economical about the truth himself about living in the flat with Aston. He owned it, and enjoyed asserting the power that gave him over Davies. But he did reveal a slightly more tender side when exposing his aspirations to Davies, and for a moment they almost seemed like friends, albeit very briefly. Despite being treated at a shady psychiatric hospital as a youngster and experimented upon with electric shocks to the head, Aston appeared far more ‘sane’ than the other two men, perhaps because he wasn’t prone to sudden abusive outbursts like them. He didn’t possess the same malice either, content, for the most part, just plodding along through life, whilst the other two manipulated each other and the situation, deriving pleasure from causing torment, which seemed to be all they knew, and probably made their mundane lives slightly more interesting. As so much of the set and props are written into the text, it is appropriate to stage the play in a fairly naturalistic way, and this particular interpretation was like stepping back in time to the last years of the 1950s. It is conceivable that three men could suffer the same enduring lifestyle in such a flat today. If they were factual people, Aston, Davies and Mick would probably be in the same situation now, forty odd years later. The bleak fact that they were evidently going nowhere, along with the grotty, authentic looking set made it a successfully depressing production. But in a good way, that certainly left me thinking I always want to avoid getting trapped in a stagnant existence anything like the one depicted in ‘The Caretaker’. |
Reviewed by: Zoe Hewett |
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