The Caretaker, which premiered in 1961 with Donald Pleasence in the lead, was Harold Pinter’s first commercial success and instantly established him as a major playwright. Since then Davies, the dirty old tramp, has been played by such actors as Leonard Rossiter, Warren Mitchell, Patrick Stewart, Michael Gambon and Jonathan Pryce. Gambon was the filthiest tramp you ever did see.
Matthew Warchus’s revival at The Old Vic relies on Timothy Spall to carry the audience through the first act, which he does by giving the tramp airs and graces and an exaggerated manner of speaking.
Davies is befriended by one brother (Daniel Mays) and humiliated by the other (George MacKay). Stupidly, he switches his allegiance to the bully and finds he is rejected by both men.
MacKay’s bullyboy uses sarcasm and irony to bamboozle and provoke Davies, plying him with useless bits of information about street names and bus numbers. MacKay makes his long speeches at a terrific lick. The speed is impressive; but
the truth is that these highly characteristic, Pinteresque linguistic games would be even funnier if he took them a bit slower.
Daniel Mays’s key moment comes when, as Mick’s kind and generous brother, he sits on the edge of his bed and describes in great detail his hospitalisation and lobotomy.
David Ireland’s Cyprus Avenue, directed by Vicky Featherstone at Royal Court Upstairs, is a joint production with Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. Irish playwrights have a long tradition of mixing comedy and violence. Eric, a Belfast Loyalist, is a man still living in the past and fighting old battles; so deeply disturbed is he that he’s convinced his five-week-old baby granddaughter is Gerry Adams. He hates Republicans and Catholics and argues that without racial prejudice the Ulster Protestants are nothing and they won’t survive. His resentment, disappointment, false expectations and ruined dreams have made him paranoid about losing his identity: “I am not, never have been, nor ever will be, Irish.”
But what terrifies Eric most is that he might indeed be Irish and that his entire existence has been an elaborate lie driven by the force of history. His confusion, despair and madness are brilliantly brought out by Stephen Rea, who is comic yet ineffably real and sad. Finally, the black farce turns so horrific that suddenly nobody is laughing.
Meanwhile, at Royal Court’s main theatre, Alistair McDowall’s X may appeal to sci-fi fans but the cinema does this sort of thing so much better. A British crew is at a research station in space, orbiting Pluto. It has lost contact with Earth. There is nothing for them to do but lose their memories, lose their language, go mad and die.
Tennessee Williams’s heyday was the 1950s, and he had been long out of fashion with public and critics alike when he wrote In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, an autobiographical piece about the humiliating and unavoidable doom of an artist long past his sell-by date.
The reception at the premiere in 1969 was bad – even his mother said it was time he found another occupation. The production ran for only 23 performances. The revival at the Charing Cross Theatre struggles to make it work for today’s audience.
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