"Caretaker"
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"Since the remarkable success of "The Caretaker" in 1960, Harold Pinter has been recognized as 'the most fascinating, enigmatic, and accomplished dramatist in the English language."

- Newsweek

"The Caretaker" is a powerful drama with a climax that tears at the heart and proclaims its author as one of the most important playwrights of our day."

- New York Times

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Donald Pleasence died at 75 in 1995.

Robert Shaw died of a heart attack in 1978; he was only 51 years old.

Peter Woodthorpe appeared most recently in th 1999 "David Copperfield mini.

Harold Pinter recently celebrated his 70th birthday. He has a new play in production, and his long-planned Proust adaptation opens at the National Theatre in November.

Michael Codron is still an active West End producer.

Alan Bates died of pancreatic cancer in 2003.

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Further Reading

"The Life and Work of Harold Pinter," by Michael Billington, a superb biography, has extensive mention of "The Caretaker" and related topics.

"Conversations with Pinter," by Mel Gussow.

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Footnote

As part of the Royal National Theatre's "NT2000" programme celebrating 100 plays of the last century, several scenes from "The Caretaker" were presented on 30 April 1999 at the Lyttelton Theatre. Harold Pinter appeared in the role of Aston; it was a fascinating reading, marred only by the fact that at Mr Pinter's request no questions were allowed at the end. Warren Mitchell played Davies, and Roger Lloyd Pack, Mick.

t h e a t r e

Reunion This wonderful photo was taken by L. Arnold Weissberger in London in June, 1971: "Shortly after the opening of Harold Pinter's "Old Times," I gave a party for Harold at our rooms at the Savoy Hotel. As the guests gathered I suddenly realized that we had with us the cast of the New York and subsequent film productions of Harold's first success, "The Caretaker." Alan Bates, Donald Pleasence and Robert Shaw, not to mention Harold himself, had been almost unknown to New York audiences when the play opened. I herded them out of the drawing room into my bedroom, removed the shade from the bedside reading lamp to get better light, and snapped this picture."

"A ROOM. A window in the back wall, the bottom half covered by a sack. An iron bed along the left wall. Above it a small cupboard, paint buckets, boxes containing nuts, screws, etc. More boxes, vases, by the side of the bed. A door, up right. To the right of the window, a mound: a kitchen sink a step-ladder, a coal bucket, a lawn-mower, a shopping trolley, boxes, sideboard drawers. Under this mound an iron bed. In front of it a gas stove. On the gas stove a statue of Buddha. Down right, a fireplace. Around it a couple of suitcases, rolled carpet, a blow-lamp, a wooden chair on its side, boxes, a number or ornaments, a clothes horse, a few short planks of wood, a small electric fire and a very old electric toaster. Below this a pile of old newspapers. Under ASTON'S bed by the left wall, is an electrolux, which is not seen till used. A bucket hangs from the ceiling."

THIS IS Harold Pinter's stage setting for "The Caretaker," his first successful play. The action of the play takes place in a house in West London; Act I, a winter night; Act II, a few second later, and Act III, a fortnight later. What happens in that attic room, between brothers Mick and Aston, and the tramp, Davies?
In all of Pinter's plays, seemingly ordinary events become charged with profound, if elusive, meaning, haunting pathos, and wild comedy. In "The Caretaker," a tramp finds lodging in the derelict house of two brothers. Harold Pinter gradually exposes the inner strains and fears of his characters, alternating hilarity and terror to create an almost unbearable edge of tension.

Tramp's Progress
from the Sunday Times, 16 June 1991

At the beginning of 1958 Harold Pinter moved into two rooms in Chiswick High Road with his wife and newborn son. The accommodation was modest - there was a shared lavatory - but it was better than nothing and until he found it his wife had had to stay on in hospital. The house was shared by two brothers, the elder of whom offered a tramp shelter in it. Eventually, after a row, the tramp was thrown out.
Pinter watched from the sidelines and an idea was born. That idea became one of the most influential plays of the century. ...
In May of that year Pinter, who was known as David Baron as an actor, had another play, "The Birthday Party, scheduled for production at the Lyric, Hammersmith. It met with incomprehension. "Sorry Mr Pinter, you're just not funny enough." (Evening Standard) ... "What all this means only Mr Pinter knows." (Manchester Guardian) ... The only comprehending review, by Harold Hobson, appeared in The Sunday Times: "Deliberately, I am willing to risk whatever reputation I have as a judge of plays by saying that Mr Pinter possesses the most original, disturbing, and arresting talent in theatrical London." But by the time the review appeared, the play had closed with takings totaling £260 for the week.
It was in these circumstances that Pinter, in the house in Chiswick, having little work as an actor, wrote "The Caretaker," the play about a tramp and two brothers which was to transform his life. The script was sent to Donald Pleasence by the producer Michael Codron, who was putting it on at the small Arts Theatre after the losses he had sustained on "The Birthday Party."
"It was like being handed "The Cherry Orchard" before it had been seen," Pleasence recalled [at the time of the 1991 revival, in which he repeated his original role]. "One's first reaction was: what curious people, why are they talking like that? But I thought it was a masterpiece and I still think the same." He was busy filming at the time. "There were only three weeks for rehearsal. We did it in a hell of a hurry as a labour of love, because the money was nothing. I was overworked and tired and was pounding this enormous text into my head - one of the longest parts written."

Pinter attended rehearsals and Pleasence drove him home at night. "He was very helpful to an actor, provided you asked him precise questions; I said, 'It's supposed to be funny, isn't it?' He replied, 'If it isn't funny it isn't anything.' One night we stopped outside this house in Chiswick High Road and I realised I knew it. I'd had my photograph taken next door by an Indian stage photographer who lived there with his elegant wife." These were the "blacks" whom Davies, the tramp, complained about sharing the lavatory with, Pinter told him.
"The tramp was still knocking around. One day during rehearsals Harold met him and discovered he was washing up in the Black and White milk bar. He was last seen crossing Hammersmith Bridge. 'What did you feel about the old man at the end?' I asked him. 'Thank Christ they got rid of the old bastard,' he said. That was very helpful to me."
The first night of "The Caretaker" caused plenty of mirth in the theatre, whose small auditorium was largely filled with critics. But they did not fall over in eagerness to make reparations for murdering "The Birthday Party." The Times called "The Caretaker a "slight" play, leaving it in "pleasurable confusion." The Daily Telegraph found it "excessively derivative" from "Waiting for Godot." The Guardian man said: "It is a fascinating by-way but one hopes he will move on."
It is strange now to recall the amount of mystification then surrounding all discussions of Pinter's work, the much quoted "non-communication" of his characters (not at all evident now), their "Pinterish" or "Pinteresque" absurdities of speech - both words came into use soon after the play opened in 1960.
"What is obscure is the connection between what the character says and what another says afterwards. How do they communicate? Do they communicate at all? We do not know." Thus The Times critic lacerated himself. Theories were plentiful about what the characters symbolised, just as they had been with "Waiting for Godot" five years earlier. People expected stage characters either to explain themselves or to symbolise Something Else."

Pinter had gone so far as to write an unsigned programme note for the Royal Court production of "The Room" and "The Dumb Waiter" a month beforehand: "A character who can present no convincing argument or information as to his past experience, his present behaviour or his aspirations, nor give a comprehensive analysis of his motives, is as legitimate and worthy of attention as one who, alarmingly, can do all these things," he wrote.

Pinter with Pleasence and Bates in rehearsal

In those more approachable days, Pinter gave occasional interviews: "There have been a lot of assumptions of clear and definite behaviour," he said toe, discussing the reaction to "The Caretaker," "But I don't find my own behaviour definite and clear. To pretend to find your behaviour clear is to engage in a conspiracy with other people who would like to find their own behaviour clear. Most of the time we're elusive, evasive, obstructive."
He also said of the tramp who inspired Davies, "I got some of the lines from this tramp. The rest I took forward in a sort of logical progression. That line of his about having had dinner with the best - I never heard a tramp say that."

By the time "The Caretaker" transferred to the Duchess Theatre at the end of May, 1960, a much bigger public was alert to the fascination of Pinter's dialogue. "The Birthday Party" had been televised successfully in March, followed by "A Night Out." It was the beginning of a brief love affair between the small screen and a prestigious playwright who supplied it with a stream of works that were to be television events. "The Caretaker" became a hot ticket and broke the box office record at the Duchess.
"We thought we might get the overspill from the Strand theatre opposite, where Olivier was playing in "Rhinoceros," says Pleasence, "but in fact they got the overspill from us." It ran for 18 months before transferring to New York, where the critical acclaim was great but the run a modest five months. ... For his performance as the tramp Pleasence won the London critics' best actor award, was nominated for a Tony award in New York and later was voted in Time magazine to have given the "best stage performance of the decade."
"The Caretaker" had 11 productions overseas in its first year alone. Since then scarcely a year has gone by without there being at least one production of it in a leading foreign theatre. |||