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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Lyn Gardner

The Caretaker

"The Caretaker is funny up to a point. Beyond that point it ceases to be funny, and it was because of that point that I wrote it," declared Harold Pinter, after the premiere of his play in 1960. Gari Jones's production for English Touring Theatre is very funny indeed. This is good, up to a point.

Malcolm Storry's weasely tramp Davies in particular gets the measure of this comedy with menaces. Davies is all show and no substance. He is like a music-hall turn who has run out of jokes. Storry's risk-taking performance is full of crafty little routines. Davies constantly betrays himself with his body: the way he tries to blend into Aston's torso when he feels threatened by Mick; the little victory jiggle he gives when he gets the bag, winning the battle but unaware that he is losing the war.

Pinter's play is a war with skirmishes and guerrilla tactics, full-out assaults and sudden raids. It is a futile war fought over the territory of Aston's pathetic room, a damp dingy room filled with useless junk. But then those who have least often fight hardest to keep what they have: in Davies, Pinter traced the psychology of hatred and fear. Davies is a man who thinks others are always trying to get something from him, whether it is the blacks, Poles and Greeks he bad-mouths, or his benefactor, Aston, a burned out husk of a man destroyed by mental illness and electric shock treatment. Davies thinks he is clever, but he is no match for the manipulative Mick who closes in on Davies, and shuts the rat in the trap.

Pinter takes an inordinately long time to set up the situation, and Jones's production takes an inordinately long time to play it out - three hours. If it is not always gripping it is because the scenario is over-familiar and lacks the metaphysical quality that would save it from seeming dated. It is like a long train journey through dullish terrain with intermittent spectacular scenery. The spectacle here is mostly supplied by the actors.

The evening never quite persuades that the play deserves its classic status, but if you are going to spend a night in a room with three men there is more art here than you'll find in Art.

Ends tonight. Box office: 01865 798600. Then tours to Bury St Edmunds, Warwick, Ipswich, Greenwich and Blackpool.

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