Pinter, Harold. The Caretaker: A Play in Three Acts. London: Encore Publishing Co., 1960. OCLC 10322991. Print. Yeah, it's very very very deep. Who am I to say it but whatever the author showed or conveyed in his work could've been done in a less literal way. He made the entire story absurd to prove his point. He made all his characters retards to show the 'stutter' of his time. A strange play. A guy lets an old homeless man share his room after being harassed by someone until he gets up on his feet. Plays, including The Birthday Party (1958) and The Dumb Waiter (1960), of British playwright, screenwriter, and director Harold Pinter create an atmosphere of menace; people awarded him the Nobel Prize for literature in 2005. Pinter originally intended the play to end with Aston murdering Davies, but he felt that the characters took him elsewhere; it instead ends with Aston politely but emphatically asking Davies to leave the home.

The Caretaker (also known as The Guest) is a 1963 British drama film directed by Clive Donner and based on the Harold Pinter play of the same name. It was entered into the 13th Berlin International Film Festival where it won the Silver Bear Extraordinary Jury Prize. [2] Plot [ edit ] Daniel Mays is the brother, who has been released from a mental institution, damaged but apparently calm. He is the still point in the production, and the most nearly frightening. His speech about electro-convulsive therapy, delivered with steady bewilderment, is lit so that he is in isolation from everything around him. This is the most compelling episode in the evening. He seems to be hovering above himself like a drone. Waiting to bomb. What's On: The Caretaker (archived past seasons). Sheffield Theatres, n.d. Web. 13 March 2009. (Run at Sheffield Theatres ended on 11 November 2006.)What if we go down to get our papers or go to see the man about the job he is keeping especially for us or head off to the church where they were going to give us a brand new pair of shoes and it turns out, after all our efforts in getting there, that they tell us, after looking us up and down with a gaze that's impossible to misinterpret, to piss off? What then? The old man starts turning on the room mate and tries to impress the landlord brother. He is offered a role as a caretaker subject to providing references, upon which his paperwork is in another town. And how he has been trying to imminently regain them for the past decade. See also: Characteristics of Harold Pinter's work §"Two silences", and Characteristics of Harold Pinter's work §The "Pinter pause"

I felt the loneliness and the absurdity. Absurdity and absurdity. Lots of it. Too much of it that it got too, well, absurd. I get it. I get what the writer tried to convey to the audience but for me, it was a reading disaster. I wouldn't have read it at all if I wasn't worried about failing my Drama exam. And this is what we get to study? Knowles, Roland. The Birthday Party and The Caretaker : Text and Performance. London: Macmillan Education, 1988. 41–43. Print. As far as I know Harold Pinter, plot and story are usually non-existent in his works, but I still write a few lines about what goes on in this play. Virginia Museum Theater (VMT), directed by James Kirkland. Part of the mission of the Virginia Museum at the time was to disseminate the arts, including drama, widely to the people of Virginia. In this regard, it is noteworthy that this was the second Pinter play to be produced by VMT, showing the increasing popularity of his works. This production followed the company's statewide tour of The Homecoming two years previously. [10] Major themes in the play include the problems of communication; race and social class; the current political state in 1950s England; identity; language; and deception. The play is lauded for its placement of a man of the lower social class at (literal) center stage, for its naturalistic language, meticulous crafting, dynamic interplay between characters, and layers of meaning.Aston smiles at him when he thinks he is asleep. He doesn't know that Davies is watching him through the blanket, only pretending to be asleep. I thought this was great, that smile. That kind of made it for me. That Davies is in this guy's room, pretending to sleep in the bed he gave him. Yet he didn't give it him. He's only borrowing it for an undetermined time. He doesn't know Aston, or what he wants from him. Find sources: "The Caretaker"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( March 2009) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)

The theme of isolation appears to result from the characters' inability to communicate with one another, and the characters' own insularity seems to exacerbate their difficulty communicating with others. [ citation needed] Roundabout Theatre Company, New York City. Directed by David Jones. Set design: John Beatty, Costume design: Jane Greenwood, Lighting: Peter Lezorowski. Design: Scott Lehrer. The Caretaker is one of playwright Harold Pinter's most popular plays, and certainly one of the 20th century's most notable works of the stage. It is Pinter's second full-length play, but his first major success. Critics delve into its historical, social, and political themes, but Pinter himself spoke of his work as simply a piece concerning "a particular human situation" and about only "three particular people...not, incidentally, symbols."

Pinter's dramas often involve strong conflicts among ambivalent characters who struggle for verbal and territorial dominance and for their own versions of the past. Stylistically, these works are marked by theatrical pauses and silences, comedic timing, irony and menace. Thematically ambiguous, they raise complex issues of individual identity oppressed by social forces, language, and vicissitudes of memory. In 1981, Pinter stated that he was not inclined to write plays explicitly about political subjects; yet in the mid-1980s he began writing overtly political plays, reflecting his own heightening political interests and changes in his personal life. This "new direction" in his work and his left-wing political activism stimulated additional critical debate about Pinter's politics. Pinter, his work, and his politics have been the subject of voluminous critical commentary. There’s no real closure or objective in sight. I think this could be a snap shot into the communication issues amongst the homeless and mentally unwell people (the civic guy in this case). It’s also a little sad how nice people get used or taken advantage of but then you can understand their rationale for doing so. You've got...this thing. That's your complaint. And we've decided, he said, that in your interests there's only one course we can take. He said...he said, we're going to do something to your brain. Aston, 42 Another prevalent theme is the characters' inability to communicate productively with one another. [ citation needed] The play depends more on dialogue than on action; however, though there are fleeting moments in which each of them does seem to reach some understanding with the other, more often, they avoid communicating with one another as a result of their own psychological insecurities and self-concerns. [ citation needed] The Caretaker and The Dumb Waiter : Two Plays by Harold Pinter 1960. New York: Grove Press, 1988. ISBN 0-8021-5087-X (10). ISBN 978-0-8021-5087-5 (13). Print.

I mean, we don't have any conversation, you see? You can't live in the same room with someone who...who don't have any conversation with you. Davies, 46 Brian Richardson, Performance review of The Caretaker, Studio Theatre (Washington D.C.), 12 September 1993, The Pinter Review: Annual Essays 1994, ed. Francis Gillen and Steven H. Gale (Tampa: U of Tampa P, 1994) 109-10: "Here, real objects and stylized representations alternate and the three vertical structures [of the set] though not symmetrical, balance each other in a rough though pleasing harmony." That is not evident from Matthew Warchus’s new production. It has a terrific cast. It has sparky moments. But it is not nuanced and never driven. Despite obtrusive music between scenes – doomy chords and what sounds like an amplified mobile phone – there is scarcely a hint of terror. Scarcely a sense that these laughs are a sign of teetering on the edge. The play's staccato language and rhythms are musically balanced through strategically placed pauses. 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. Composer Ron Grainer was tasked to produce not a score but a sequence of sound effects, often metallic in nature, but which also include the sound of a drip which occasionally falls from the attic ceiling and a squeak as Aston uses a screwdriver. Grainer used his previous experiences working with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in the creation of the sound picture. [5] Reception [ edit ]For a review of the Sheffield Theatres production, see Lyn Gardner, "Theatre: The Caretaker: Crucible, Sheffield", Guardian, Culture: Theatre. Guardian Media Group, 20 October 2006. Web. 12 March 2009.