Taking Care of Business: The Caretaker

Forget Lady and the Tramp, The Citizens Theatre presented Two Men and a Tramp in Harold Pinter’s 1959, critically acclaimed play, The Caretaker. Two brothers allow a homeless tramp to stay in their clutter and character-filled room, which becomes a centre point of emotion and growth between the men. Pinter’s renowned themes are all present here: time, memory, the fight for control; unanswered questions and mystery; characters bursting with eccentricity and tragedy, all underlined with quirky humour and oddities.

Pinter’s scripting has the danger of going horribly and awkwardly wrong if not brilliantly acted; thankfully Phillip Breen’s cast exceeded their abilities. Tam Dean Burn displayed an erratic, opportunistic tramp, desperately clawing at the social ladder, an idea made literal at times through his twitching movements and hunched posture. He provided great amusement through his fabricated tales, disgust for checked shirts and his search for a pair of “good shoes!”, picking up a red, velvet smoking jacket on the way. Eugene O’Hare played the authoritative, ‘businessman’ – “he’s got his own van.”- who is hilariously strange, pompous and menacing, almost mafia-esque as he commands the stage in his black, leather bomber jacket. Robert Hastie balances these two, dramatic characters in the part of Aston, a taciturn, kind, lonesome figure, who later reveals a chilling past of electric-shock therapy and illness. Breen combines a balance of circus comedy and slapstick humour with chilling, screaming silences, tension and great attention to detail and movement, as the characters are delicately revealed, ironically leaving the tramp looking the most sane of the lot. This all takes place within a wonderfully evocative setting of a cluttered room, riddled with stacks of paper, wood, boxes and buckets, with a golden Buddha taking pride of place above the broken stove.

Although never an intention of Pinter, The Caretaker is in many ways a historical piece, capturing a forgotten way of life from the 1950s. It displays family loyalty; social status and the struggle for power; the interactions between men and how their work and status define them, ideas that are currently more poignant than ever. However, Pinter’s intentions were far more simple: his ‘slice-of-life’ play was written purely to be enjoyed and to capture the essence of the characters: Davies, Aston, Mick, and the room itself.