Harold Pinter's 'The Caretaker' since its first performance in London in 1960 has received much deserving critical praise. Analysts of theater have dissected the play ever since and so many things have been written about its psychology. Much that has been written is true and yet, one feels, that something more could still be said about this play. Such is this play that it hits you on many different levels. In terms of precise definitions it is a works of art that seems just a shade out of reach.
Critics have compared The Caretaker with Becket's Waiting for Godot. To me The Caretaker is so much straightforward, for the people in The Caretaker are real people in real situations. But both are great modern plays and the comparison is justified.
I wonder what The caretaker is primarily about? Indeed, it provokes thought. It grips you in a way that the questions arising in your mind relentlessly demand answers. The Caretaker is about manipulation. Yes, it is, but it is also about affection somehow. Is it not also about intensely controlled violence? Yes, as it may well be about forgiveness, too. And it is about man's need to associate and adjust to situations and get out of them. At least to me it was a play primarily about man's need to get out of situations.
Life as we live it is a segmental flux of situations: a ceaseless segmented continuity. One situation changes to another and the two are attached to one another by a shift in the power equation between people who are in them. It is an ocean where people with strangely uncommon characters and needs feel compelled to associate with one another, adjust to one another, in order to anchor & establish a personal identity. From this angle The Caretaker is Pinter's brilliant comment on man, the animal. The claws man uses are different from those used by animals to survive. Pinter shows us glimpses of them, particularly in the behaviour of Mick, the brother of retarded Aston. They are retractable claws, for their dangerous appearance depends on the threat posed by even an impossibly incapable bum of a character like Davies, the tramp. In the beginning this dubious impostor (with two names, who claims to have been almost everywhere, done everything but in actuality has nowhere to go, and has apparently done nothing in life) is meek and undemanding. But we see that he becomes demanding once there is a shift in circumstance. He threatens to kill Aston, but has no courage to do so because, perhaps, he can not afford the responsibility in every sense of the term.
There is one sequence in the play which, I thought, was a brilliant use by Pinter of pure theatricality to suggest the power equation between the two brothers :- Aston brings home a bag for Jenkins (Davies). It is assumed that it is Jenkin's although he has no clue regarding its contents. Mick grabs it from Jenkin's hands when Aston gives it to Jenkins and hands it back to Aston. This action is repeated about four times. Lastly, Aston takes the bag from Mick and gives it back to him. Only then does Mick let Jenkins have it. A sequence without words packed with meaning! Just the eye contact between the two brothers speaks volumes about the power factor in their relationship.
The caretaker was performed in Auroville on the 11th,12th and the13th of Dec. Norman Bowler, a 75 years old theatre veteran in his maiden directorial venture did an excellent job of it. Whatever may be the other merits of the director, Norman had successfully 'communicated' to his actors what in his view each character was in relation to the complexity of the play. Each actor brought out the maximum that could possibly be extracted from each character. Otto, with quite some years of acting behind him was, perhaps, at his best as Jenkins. His devious Jenkins was obnoxious and ungrateful, mean and helpless and almost every other thing Jenkins is supposed to be in The Caretaker. In degrees he evoked pity and in degrees loathing towards his character from the audience. In 'acting between his lines' he was excellent.
Talking about acting out the unspoken thoughts of a character Krishna McKenzie, playing the retarded Aston was unparalleled. Aston is someone who thinks slow, rather deliberate thoughts and articulates them in a laboured, measured sort of speech. Krishna was superb with his grip on Aston, particularly in his soliloquy towards the middle of the two hour play. There was a masterly handling of lighting by Jean Legrand and Mahi, especially here, as it gradually concentrated just on Aston's eyes; his speech was heard almost as a confirmation of his slow, deliberate thoughts. It was indeed very impressive!
Nikolai Musgrave who played Mick in my opinion had the most difficult job of the three actors, in that he had to balance two delicate aspects of Mick's temperament simultaneously. He is the only man who has to maintain his sanity among two virtually insane characters and equally insane situations in that room, for unlike the other two lost in their own psychosis, he is a member of 'the sane society' outside that room. Nikolai did brilliantly (except where he appeared to smother his smile in a scene or two which were meant to evoke not humour but mordant pathos.)
The set, designed originally by Aubert Defoy, worked wonders with the effect of claustrophobia the play suggests. The dull greenish gray of the walls with all the clitter-clatter strewn about added just that oppressive element which is needed to underscore the uneasy feeling which makes you want to get out of that room. When your sets work as a metaphore for the play's superobjective, I say, "Hat's off, Guys!"
