The Caretaker - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article is about the play by Harold Pinter. For other uses, see Caretaker. The Caretaker. First edition cover of The Caretaker, 1. Written by. Harold Pinter. Characters. Mick, a man in his late twenties. Aston, a man in his early thirties. The Caretaker 1963 : Directed by Clive Donner. Starring: Donald Pleasence, Alan Bates and Robert Shaw. Not published as a screenplay. Original play by Harold Pinter. It is a triangle plot: old tramp. The Caretaker study guide contains a biography of Harold Pinter, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. The Caretaker Analysis Harold Pinter. Navigate Study Guiderows. This Page Only; Entire Study Guide; list Cite. In the play 'The Caretaker' by Harold Pinter. An introduction to The Caretaker by Harold Pinter. Learn about the book and the historical context in which it was written. COMMUNITY SHAPING Person Specification CARETAKER/PLAY AREA ATTENDANT – RUSHCLIFFE COUNTRY PARK Post number: Post grade: Manual 3 ATTRIBUTES ESSENTIAL DESIRABLE EXPERIENCE Experience of providing a service to the public.Davies, an old man. Date premiered. 27 April 1. Place premiered. Arts Theatre. Westminster, London. Original language. English. Setting. A house in West London. Winter. The Caretaker is a play in three acts by Harold Pinter. Although it was the sixth of his major works for stage and television, this psychological study of the confluence of power, allegiance, innocence, and corruption among two brothers and a tramp, became Pinter's first significant commercial success. The movie starred Alan Bates as Mick and Donald Pleasence as Davies in their original stage roles, while Robert Shaw replaced Peter Woodthorpe as Aston. First published by both Encore Publishing and Eyre Methuen in 1. The Caretaker remains one of Pinter's most celebrated and oft- performed plays. Plot summary. Davies comments on the flat and criticises the fact that it is cluttered and badly kept. Aston attempts to find a pair of shoes for Davies but Davies rejects all the offers. Once he turns down a pair that doesn't fit well enough and another that has the wrong colour laces. Early on, Davies reveals to Aston that his real name is not . He claims that his papers validating this fact are in Sidcup and that he must and will return there to retrieve them just as soon as he has a good pair of shoes. Aston and Davies discuss where he will sleep and the problem of the . Davies denies that he made any noise and blames the racket on the neighbours, revealing his fear of foreigners: . Aston informs Davies that he is going out but invites him to stay if he likes, indicating that he trusts him (2. Just as Mick reaches the climactic line of his diatribe geared to put the old tramp off balance. The three battle over the . After Mick leaves, and Davies recognises him to be . Aston offers Davies the job of Caretaker, (4. After a discussion with Davies about the place being his . He blames various aspects of the flat's set up. Aston suggests adjustments but Davies proves to be callous and inflexible. Aston tells the story of how he was checked into a mental hospital and given electric shock therapy, but when he tried to escape from the hospital he was shocked while standing, leaving him with permanent brain damage; he ends by saying, . But I want to do something first. I want to build that shed out in the garden. Critics regard Aston's monologue, the longest of the play, as the . Though initially invited to be a . I think it's about time you found somewhere else. I don't think we're hitting it off. When finally threatened by Davies pointing a knife at him, Aston tells Davies to leave: . Davies, outraged, claims that Mick will take his side and kick Aston out instead and leaves in a fury, concluding (mistakenly): . Eventually, Mick takes Aston's side, beginning with the observation . Mick forces Davies to disclose that his . Here's half a dollar. When Aston comes back into the apartment, the brothers face each other. Both are smiling, faintly. Using the excuse of having returned for his . But Aston rebuffs each of Davies' rationalisations of his past complaints (7. The play ends with a . Billington notes in his authorised biography that Pinter claims to have written the play while he and his first wife Vivien Merchant were living in Chiswick. There was a chap who owned the house: a builder, in fact, like Mick who had his own van and whom I hardly ever saw. The only image of him was of this swift mover up and down the stairs and of his van going . His brother lived in the house. Anyway, he did bring a tramp back one night. I call him a tramp, but he was just a homeless old man who stayed three or four weeks. According to Billington, Pinter described Mick as the most purely invented character of the three. I was totally out of work. So I was very close to this old derelict's world, in a way. He also picked up locales. The Sidcup in The Caretaker comes from the fact that the Royal Artillery. HQ was there when I was a National Serviceman and its almost mythical quality as the fount of all permission and record was a source.' To English ears. For Davies it is a Kentish. Eldorado: the place that can solve all the problems about his unresolved identity and uncertain past, present and future. I have always tried to interpret his plays with as much humour and humanity as possible. There is always mischief lurking in the darkest corners. The world of The Caretaker is a bleak one, its characters damaged and lonely. But they are all going to survive. And in their dance to that end they show a frenetic vitality and a wry sense of the ridiculous that balance heartache and laughter. Funny, but not too funny. As Pinter wrote, back in 1. Beyond that point, it ceases to be funny, and it is because of that point that I wrote it. At the center of the drama is the horrifically indiscriminate use of shock therapy, which left one of the characters with brain damage; Matthew Rixon's disturbingly docile Aston is a brilliant portrait of the horrors inflicted by a supposedly civilised state. The climax comes in the harrowing monologue in which he recalls the moment the electrodes were attached. The lights close down on his traumatised features as he speaks, leaving us uncomfortably alone with his thoughts. I went into another room and saw two people sitting down, and a few years later I wrote The Birthday Party. I looked through a door into a third room and saw two people standing up and I wrote The Caretaker. His efforts to appease the ever- complaining Davies may be seen as an attempt to reach out to others. He desperately seeks a connection in the wrong place and with the wrong people. His main obstacle is his inability to communicate. He is misunderstood by his closest relative, his brother, and thus is completely isolated in his existence. His good- natured attitude makes him vulnerable to exploitation. His dialogue is sparse and often a direct response to something Mick or Davies has said. Aston has dreams of building a shed. The shed to him may represent all the things his life lacks: accomplishment and structure. The shed represents hope for the future. Davies. Davies manufactures the story of his life, lying or sidestepping some details to avoid telling the whole truth about himself. He adjusts aspects of the story of his life according to the people he is trying to impress, influence, or manipulate. As Billington points out, . I was one of the first over there.' He defines himself according to momentary imperatives and other people's suggestions. He talks above Davies' ability to comprehend him. His increasing dissatisfaction with Davies leads to a rapprochement with his brother, Aston; though he appears to have distanced himself from Aston prior to the opening of the play, by the end, they exchange a few words and a faint smile. Early in the play, when he first encounters him, Mick attacks Davies, taking him for an intruder in his brother Aston's abode: an attic room of a run- down house which Mick looks after and in which he enables his brother to live. At first, he is aggressive toward Davies. Later, it may be that by suggesting that Davies could be . The disparities between the loftiness of Mick's . In the Theatre of the Absurd language is used in a manner that heightens the audience's awareness of the language itself, often through repetition and circumventing dialogue. The play has often been compared to Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett, and other absurdist plays because of its apparent lack of plot and action. The fluidity of the characters is explained by Ronald Knowles as follows: . Character is no longer the clearly perceived entity underlying clarity of articulation the objectification of a social and moral entelechy but something amorphous and contingent (4. Language. The Caretaker is filled with long rants and non- sequiturs, the language is either choppy dialogue full of interruptions or long speeches that are a vocalised train of thought. Although the text is presented in a casual way, there is always a message behind its simplicity. Pinter is often concerned with . Pinter toys with silence, where it is used in the play and what emphasis it places on the words when they are at last spoken. Mode of drama: Tragicomedy. Davies has pretended to be someone else and using an assumed name, . But, in response to separate inquiries by Aston and Mick, it appears that Davies' real name is not really . Davies uses an assumed name and has convinced himself that he is really going to resolve his problems relating to his lack of identity papers, even though he appears too lazy to take any such responsibility for his own actions and blames his inaction on everyone but himself. Aston believes that his dream of building a shed will eventually reach fruition, despite his mental disability. Mick believes that his ambitions for a successful career outweigh his responsibility to care for his mentally damaged brother. In the end however all three men are deceiving themselves. Their lives may continue on beyond the end of the play just as they are at the beginning and throughout it. The deceit and isolation in the play lead to a world where time, place, identity, and language are ambiguous and fluid. It starred Donald Pleasence as Davies, Alan Bates as Mick, and Peter Woodthorpe as Aston. The productions received generally strong reviews. Stevens, Frederick Brisson, and Gilbert Miller. Directed by Donald Mc. Whinnie. Setting: Bert Currah, Sets Supervised and lighting: Paul Morrison, Production Supervisor: Fred Herbert, Stage Manager/Understudy: Joel Fabiani. Part of the mission of the Virginia Museum at the time was to disseminate the arts, including drama, widely to the people of Virginia.
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