A WHOLE LOT OF ACTING GOIN' ON: Pinter's "The Caretaker" with Jonathan Pryce at BAM

In case I failed to mention it, I did take in the current production of Harold Pinter's "The Caretaker" with Jonathan Pryce at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theater.

Pryce, Hassell & Cox in "The Caretaker" at BAM

But then comes the question, what can one say about it? Can you ever really know what the heck it's all about? "The Caretaker" was Pinter's first success in the theater and shows the British playwright flexing his artistic muscle. Pinter was never one to be categorized, but you can't help but feel the effects and acceptance of Beckett in this early work. But Beckett's characters begrudgingly honor their humanity even as they stare into the yawning abyss, where Pinter's are perpetually lost in an arid emotionless desert.


In this case we have Aston (Alan Cox) bringing an old geezer, Davies (Pryce), home to his cluttered leaky attic room in a house owned by his brother, Mick (Alex Hassell). There's talk of things being done around the place (a shed in the backyard is on top of the list) but the only work that gets accomplished is Aston's constant repairs on an old toaster. The two brothers are rarely in the same room together and when they are they don't speak. Mick takes a sadistic pleasure in harassing old Davies. Davies sees a weakness in Aston and tries to prey on it which provokes Aston to revoke his invitation. All the talk is about care-taking and growth but no one seems to be able to do any. The set by Eileen Diss adds a claustrophobic tightness that provides additional tension to the drama and the lighting, masterfully done by Colin Grenfell, gives a nice sense of mustiness and passing weather. 


Pryce gives a masterful performance as the old homeless man Davies, part existential vaudeville, part Shakespearean bombast, and kept reminding me of Stanley Townsend's performance as the homeless tramp in Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky", full of gibber and flips and quirky pirouettes. It's a fine line that Pryce walks, a fine, wavering line. Alex Hassell gives Mike a sense of street menace and someone teetering on the edge of mania with the sex appeal of the psychotic. The stand-out performance of the evening is Alan Cox's Aston. Button-downed and soft-spoken, his monologue at the end of Act 1 was equally gripping and harrowing and involves the play's nastiest bit of care-taking, the kind action done out of "love" that kills rather than cares.

At the Harvey Theater, Brooklyn Academy of Music, 651 Fulton Street, Fort Greene; (718) 636-4100, bam.org. Through June 17.