nytheatre.com review by Martin Denton November 13, 2003 Roundabout Theatre Company presents a revival of Harold Pinter's The Caretaker, starring Patrick Stewart, Kyle McLachlan, and Aidan Gillen. In The Caretaker, power games played between Mick and his vulnerable brother Aston take a sinister turn when Aston brings a tramp, Davies, to their squalid flat. As the brothers strive to manipulate Davies, the vulnerability and inadequacy of all three men are exposed. Roundabout has staged The Caretaker twice before, in 1973 and 1981. I've only seen recent Pinter; so I was especially interested in Roundabout's production of The Caretaker this season to get a look at one of the early famous works, on stage. I was not disappointed. The Caretaker takes place in a large room in a house in London. Most of the house is unoccupied and boarded up. In a fairly neat segment of this room are a bed, a wardrobe, and a few shelves.accoutrements of the spare life of a man named Aston whom we meet shortly after the play begins. For reasons that are partially revealed later on, Aston is eccentric and a bit out-of-step with what we would call normal human endeavor, and this room which is his only home reflects this, for apart from this one orderly corner, the place is filled with junk: old furniture, knickknacks, machines; a toaster with a broken plug that Aston fiddles with; a dirty, once-golden statue of Buddha looking out over the mess from its position atop a useless old gas stove. Into this muddle, Aston brings an old man who says his name is Jenkins (though he'll admit later that his real name is Davies), a rootless and rotting old reprobate with a gift for gab and a highly developed survival instinct. Aston has apparently felt sorry for this fellow, finding him on the receiving end of some blows at a nearby shop; and so he's brought him in for some warmth and, as he reveals later on, temporary shelter. Indeed, Aston asks Davies to stay on as caretaker in this rambling old house, which we learn belonged to his parents and is now his to fix up for himself and his brother. The fixing, which is Aston's only job, is moving along with painful slowness: Aston has trouble settling in to any sort of actual work. But, he assures Davies, as soon as he gets a shed erected in the backyard, he'll be able to clear out this room and make it really comfortable. Davies gets a somewhat different picture of things from Mick, Aston's brother, who drops by from time to time. Mick has a job and other responsibilities, but he owns the house and he cares for his brother; bullying Davies (perhaps in hopes of getting Davies to bully Aston), he too signs the old man on as caretaker. And the old man is only to happy to play one brother against the other to secure his own future. Pinter's plot, which is revealed as much between the lines as through them, cannily grabs our attention and holds it; every scene seems to contain an unexpected explosion along with the profusion of eloquent silences and speeches that we do expect. It's a grand story, and against the odds, too, since very little actually happens in it.much of our information comes from inference or intuition. (The brothers' names are never actually spoken at all.) It's also very funny; and, often, discomfiting. It's rich, rewarding theatre. My companion saw in it a sad meditation on our inability to connect with each other (the characters never really hear one another) and with ourselves (they never accomplish anything either; certainly not what they say they intend). I read it as a play about power, perhaps reflecting the state of the world in the late '50s, when it was written, with old Davies representing the decaying impotence of the British Empire and Aston standing in for the alienated impotence of the Angry Young Man. You will likely discover something else: good drama like this challenges us to coax our own obsessions and concerns from its web of universal truths. The Caretaker is very good drama, indeed. And the Roundabout has done a highly commendable job of putting it on. Director David Jones' pacing may be a bit slack, but our interest never flags and the characters and themes emerge with clarity amid Pinter's deliberately murky device. John Lee Beatty works his usual wonders with the remarkably detailed set, while Jane Greenwood's costumes and Peter Kaczorowski's lighting contribute mightily to the ambiance of the piece. The play is performed beautifully by its fine cast of three: Patrick Stewart, stagy and rangy as the cantankerous and manipulative Davies; Kyle MacLachlan, careful and sympathetic as plodding Aston; and Aiden Gillen, mercurial and enigmatic as the sometimes dangerous, sometimes tame Mick (his performance brings to mind John Malkovich's similarly combustible Pale in the original Burn This). I am quite glad to have seen this Caretaker, because I think that having done so, I have now seen The Caretaker. Particularly if you're a novice Pinter spectator, I recommend this production highly. Click here to read the original article. [Link may/may not be active]