Skip to main content

Review of The Caretaker at Royal & Derngate (Royal), Northampton

Some other very wise person has probably described Harold Pinter as a marmite playwright, however, if they have I still claim it as my own and happily used it a few times, before, during the interval and after this new production of The Caretaker, from director Christopher Haydon (a co-production between Bristol Old Vic and Royal & Derngate). Pinter has a strange style which you clearly either get or don't. Since seeing his work first in 2013, with The Hothouse at Trafalgar Studios, I have come down in the first camp of "enjoying" his work. I have to be honest though in the fact that I have difficulty working out why.

The Caretaker is a prime example of the originality and oddness of Pinter, Aston meets a tramp, Davies, before the play opens, and brings him to "his" house and allows him to sleep there. Soon Mick arrives, Aston's younger brother and things become less clear of the status of these three. Over the course of two hours or so, characters are developed a little, but very little happens, and at the end, you leave with both no apparent resolution and the wonder of why you actually enjoyed it at all. I have no idea what a non-Pinter fan would think by the whole evening, although I have my suspicions.

Director Haydon has gone some way to bringing the play into the present, a flash of a mobile phone and computer monitors scattered about hint at this, and it mostly works. This is very much a play that could fit at any time and much of the subject matter is relevant to modern immigration issues, homelessness and loneliness in general. Some moments feel odd though with the script not being updated figures wise, so a reference to a £7 weekly rent is mentioned, and this distracts a little from the flow. The casting of three black actors (not the first time though), makes the many references to Davies' blacks interesting as well, but perhaps not unbelievable.

As Davies, Patrice Naiambana creates an oddly likeable person, with his life clearly as dishevelled and broken as the clothes that he wears. He is a developing beast of a character in the play, jovial at first reception to the home of Aston, but building and more desperate as events change, fearing his return to the street at any time and desperate to get onside with one of the two siblings. I admit that it took me a little time to get my ear around his very much Caribbean delivery, however, once there, you really appreciate how fine a character he is creating.

Perhaps the most interesting portrayal of the characters comes from David Judge's Mick, portrayed as a typical wideboy, spiv type Londoner with a penchant for leaping around Gollum style. This, like Naiambana, gets a little getting too perhaps, but personally, I loved the abject weirdness of it all. The bag snatching scene, in particular, very much prolonged here, was especially weird and delivered with an apparently never-ending style by Judge with building menace and then ending in his own boredom. I suspect if anyone has an issue with this version of The Caretaker, Mick is where they might. For myself, I loved the clipped yet also lilting nature of the delivery and he very much made the play work more for me as a result.

In absolute opposite to Mick, Jonathan Livingstone brings a slow, sloth-like movement. While not huge in height, he appears a giant of a man, broken inside but endlessly willing to help any way he can, very much Lenny from Of Mice and Men in character. Even if it seems the skills he posesses don't even reach being able to fix a toaster.

Designer Oliver Townsend has created a remarkable beast of a set. Sitting on a round pallet like flooring and with an apparent mini-explosion from the epicentre, furniture and living material has billowed out from the centre. Beds are strewn awkwardly, chairs, broken and disassembled hang precariously in the air with broken limbs floating near. A shattered toilet to the right, a shopping trolley filled with detritus to the left. An open box of cards fixed in time as they cascade out. Pinter's play The Caretaker is "a kind of moment frozen in time" which he saw once through an open door, and this set very much represents that. The constant rain at the two twisted windows also makes the whole situation more brooding and threatening in nature.

Its a clever version of the play, while forcing it into a modern setting doesn't always work and perhaps is another pointless way of making an old play relevant (there has been a lot of this going on recently due to modern life and politics), still manages to keep the original story, what there is, strong. I do perhaps pine for an old play to remain that, without forcing modern life into it. However, if you are a Pinter fan, this version of The Caretaker will not disappoint.

A near clean sweep of success.
⭐⭐⭐⭐

Performance reviewed: Wednesday 18th October 2017 at the Royal & Derngate (Royal), Northampton.
The Caretaker runs at the Royal & Derngate until Saturday 28th October 2017. Details and tickets here: https://www.royalandderngate.co.uk/whats-on/the-caretaker/

For further details about the Royal & Derngate see their website at http://www.royalandderngate.co.uk
Photos: Iona Firouzabadi
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Review of Of Mice And Men at Royal & Derngate (Royal), Northampton

Other than, randomly, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The War of the Worlds , John Steinbeck's classic Of Mice and Men is perhaps one of the most familiar of stories to me. I have seen it several times before, and while at school, we studied it, and dissected it like the work of Mr Shakespeare, but with Steinbeck, I got out the other side still liking it. This brand new version from Selladoor Productions, which opened in Canterbury last week, brings a by-the-book presentation of the trials of George and his slow, but incredibly strong friend, Lennie, to the stage. Perhaps, this is its first issue blocking a huge success from this production, in that it rarely does anything brave or different. It's clearly been expertly cast visually, with the hulking form of Matthew Wynn as Lennie, and the diminutive (in comparison) Richard Keightley and Kamran Darabi-Ford as George and Curley respectively. Darabi-Ford especially perfect in his tremendously awkward scenes wit...
Read more

Review of Northern Ballet - The Great Gatsby at Milton Keynes Theatre

This production of The Great Gatsby performed by Northern Ballet was my fifth encounter at the theatre of a full ballet production and as before, I happily share my review of the show with nearly zero knowledge of-the-art form and more of a casual theatre-goer. You could say that this is a poor direction to come in on a review, but I would say that casual audience are the ones to review this for. Over the years, Northern Ballet has set quite a high benchmark for ballet productions, and any audience member who is worth their salt as a ballet fan would no doubt have tickets for this new touring version of the 2013 version of The Great Gatsby , lovingly created by David Nixon OBE. So much is Nixon part of the very fabric of this show, that he not only provides the choreography and direction but also the initial scenario and costume design (assisted by Julie Anderson). So, discounting those ballet fans already sitting in the audience, what does this offer for the more casual theatre-goer ...
Read more

Review of Flash Festival 2016: Red Inquisition by Memoir Theatre at Castle Hill URC

Red Inquisition from Memoir Theatre evolves from a theatre groups creation of a play based on the 1947 Hollywood blacklist and McCarthyism So that I can get it out the way early on and take this review in a more upbeat direction that Red Inquisition deserves, I am going to get a real bugbear done first. There was a huge negative for me from this production and one that I ended up getting negative vibes from. For me there was far too much video and audio footage in this production. Much of it was while excellently researched, surplus to requirements. The were a couple of occasions especially where we saw material repeated on screen that had already been performed. The show did not need this and for me theatre is not about watching a screen in any case, its about seeing performances. This however does need to be taken as a positive as what I am simply saying is that I wanted more acting from the trio of Daniel Hadjivarnava, Ciara Goldsberry and Jaryd Headley as they work excellently ...
Read more