History: Reviews
The Caretaker
Fabrizio O. Almeida, Newcity
June 15, 2009
Have you heard the praise critics and audiences have been heaping upon the latest Curious Theatre Branch show, a revival of Harold Pinter's The Caretaker? Well, it's fully deserved. And now, only six performances remain to catch as fine a Pinter revival as you could hope to get, a confident and intelligent staging that nails Pinter's complex musicality, but more importantly boasts three superb performances that demand to be seen.
In The Caretaker, which was first staged in London's West End in April of 1960, we meet two brothers: Aston, a mentally damaged yet gentle and lonely soul, and Mick, his neurotic and anger-fueled younger sibling who is the landlord of their dilapidated flat. One day, Aston brings home a down-and-out vagabond named Davies, a mysterious stranger who turns out to be an exception to that old saying "beggars can't be choosers." Because as Davies reveals more of his ungrateful streak, and unsuccessfully tries to play one brother against another in a misguided attempt to ingratiate himself permanently into their household, he ultimately overstays his welcome and is evicted despite his angst-ridden cries—"Where am I going to go? What am I going to do?"—that end the play.
The Caretaker has been interpreted to "mean" everything from a parable on the Old Testament to a comment on class struggles to an indictment on the welfare state. This revival, which according to the program has been directed by the cast and Jayita Bhattacharya, who also stage-manages, has emphasized character and text, text and character, above all else. This masterful handling of Pinter's notoriously precise dialogue and gaps between the words, all three actors communicating a shared understanding of the playwright's vernacular yet making it their own in terms of individual cadencies—a remarkable achievement—results in a more straightforward reading of the play: territoriality, primitive power struggles and the difficulty of outsiders breaking through family ties that bind. This is fine with me. The Birthday Party, in which a young man is forced out of his comfortable surroundings by two older men, was always the better power struggle play in my book. The Caretaker, with its series of redundant and darkly comic scenes that at times resemble little more than a roommate arrangement gone horribly wrong, always reminded me of a bleak Odd Couple, had Neil Simon, like Harold Pinter, been influenced by Ionesco and Beckett.
Nevertheless, it's the performances that elevate this revival. Beau O'Reilly's edgy portrait of Davies refuses to sentimentalize his character, and his caustic line readings drive home Davies' racist and conniving qualities. It also means that we feel little sympathy for him when he is being discarded like a used tissue paper, and perhaps makes a case for what some have said is Pinter's cruel streak towards society's victims and the less fortunate. As Aston, Colm O'Reilly turns out a mesmerizing performance of pure vulnerability. He possesses a soothing and powerfully understated vocal instrument, which he exploits to chilling effect in his delivery of Aston's famous twenty-minute Act II monologue that recounts Aston's experience in the mental ward. You could hear a pin drop in the theater, the audience hanging on to every word. Clearly, Mr. O'Reilly could have a tremendous alternate career as a hypnotist. And finally, Jeffrey Bivens as Mick, wearing a wife-beater, jeans and leather jacket, and sporting a five o'clock shadow and dark, Charles Manson eyes, is physically a Pinter casting director's wet dream, a malevolent yet fast-talking Pinter charmer who occasionally reveals moments of piercing inner weakness. All three gentlemen don't act their roles as much as they fully inhabit them, and guarantee that the play's two-and-a-half-hour running time flies by like nothing at all. An excellent evening all around and showcasing acting of a higher caliber.
The Caretaker / Review
J. Scott Hill, Chicago Stage Review
May 30, 2009
Pinter's The Caretaker, presented by The Curious Theatre Branch, is a masterfully acted testament to the absurdity of the real.
The Caretaker takes place in a single junk-filled room, and the tiny storefront Side Project Theatre could not be a more appropriate venue. Aston, a soft-spoken, barely communicative young man, brings home a transient, to his junked-up room in an empty house he is supposed to be converting into apartments for his brother, Mick. Aston invites the transient, Davies, to move in. Davies is faced with competing narratives from Aston and Mick but lacks the cognitive ability to parse them out or to synthesize a single reliable narrative out of them. Most of the scenes are between either Aston and Davies, or Mick and Davies; generally, in the scenes with all three characters, Mick and Aston leave Davies out of their conversation.
The Curious Theatre Branch makes a bold choice by opening the show with Mick alone in that junked-up room, seated on Aston's half-stripped bed. Silence. Jeff Bivens plays Mick as attentive as a meerkat in this scene; he is clearly observing, listening, thinking—about what, though? When he hears Aston and Davies approach, he scurries out of the room and is not seen again until nearly the end of Act I. Beginning the show with one of Pinter's famous pauses—even before any dialogue—transforms, lowers Mick's threat level for the audience but keeps it intact for Davies. For this intimate performance space, it is a brilliant choice that transforms the audience into a gapers' block rather than part of the pileup.
In the opening, when Aston and Davies enter the junkroom a moment after the silent Mick leaves (the air still warm from Mick's presence) Aston speaks almost in a whisper, almost in a drone—almost, but not quite. Colm O'Reilly pulls the audience toward him with this voice; we sit on the edge of our seats listening to his sparse statements, afraid that his voice will lose its seemingly feeble strength and drift off into the mumbles. As the dilettante Aston, Colm O'Reilly is always calm but never reassuring, inorganic but never mechanical—detached from his own life.
Jeff Bivens makes Aston's brother Mick something of an archetypal trickster. A lesser actor could have lost the exquisite down-tempo rhythm of this production through playing Mick as a hammy half-assed Robin Williams impression. With occasional mania more reminiscent of Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda, Jeff Bivens teeters dangerously upon the precipices of Mick's foibles (smugness, condescension, quickness to anger) without ever falling prey to them.
Beau O'Reilly. Beau O'Reilly plays the transient Davies as if Davies were the Devil himself, only completely without cunning. Davies's attempts at guile are transparent. Davies is easily stonewalled by the low hum of Aston's word or two; he demurs at or shies from the least show of belligerence from Mick. Beau O'Reilly imbues Davies with a toddler-like faith in his own bullshit, and a toddler's particular brand of somehow endearing selfishness.
This past Christmas Eve, Harold Pinter gave the world his final ellipsis. How fitting that Curious Theatre Branch chose to produce The Caretaker—Pinter's first commercial success—at this time. If Curious Theatre Branch's production of The Caretaker is meant as Chicago theatre's eulogy of Pinter, then Pinter was respected and well loved indeed.
The Caretaker / 4 stars
John Beer, Time Out
June 4, 2009
Decrepit beds, an ancient stove, ubiquitous weird tubes: The magnificent detritus of Shawn Reddy's set greets us at this Curious production of Pinter's 1959 classic, setting the play's tone of seedy disorientation with forceful immediacy. The Caretaker is well suited to the side project's confines, less intimate here than claustrophobic. As much as Pinter's fluid, vaguely menacing language, the setting suggests anything could happen, though nothing much will.
Over three acts, the mentally challenged Aston takes in the enigmatic tramp Davies and then asks him to leave. Along the way, in a manner that essentially served as the template for David Mamet's career, the two men and Aston's brother Mick engage in a convoluted series of machinations, involving assumed identities, disquisitions on interior decorating and a famous slapstick scuffle over a bag. The Caretaker is a bit of a shaggy-dog story, but the final act's dismissal of Davies retains an emotional heft.
While all the performers engage skillfully with Pinter's teasing style, the center is Colm O'Reilly, whose mournful visage and stoic deadpan make the part of Aston a perfect fit. The second-act's monologue, in which Aston details his stay in a mental institution, is structurally an expository weak spot, but O'Reilly renders it compellingly grim. Curious claims Pinter, along with Beckett, as a guiding spirit for its longtime fringe presence; this production, smart and nuanced, if a tad reverential, demonstrates how deeply the company understands the playwright's work.
Hauntingly primal, animalistic performances are fascinating to watch
Scotty Zacher, Chicago Theater Blog
June 22, 2009
Moving season was the right time for Curious Theatre Branch to produce The Caretaker, by Harold Pinter. Tucked away in the intimate Side Project space, the set, recreating a dilapidated London apartment, is a chaos of broken down debris. A stuffed fox, old newspapers, a paint-splattered ladder, and at least four vacuum cleaners litter the space, designed by Shawn Reddy. Being a Rogers Park native, I was actually looking around to see if I recognized anything as something I threw out. The trashy setting provides a suitable backdrop to the perplexing play, itself a cacophony of dented personalities.
The Caretaker, first produced in 1960, was the first successful play of the writer who later would be hailed as Britain's greatest living playwright until his recent death in 2008. In true absurdist tradition, not much actually happens in the play. Over the three acts (spanning 2.5 hours in this production), an arm is twisted, a bag is passed around, and the three characters enter and exit the apartment; other than that, the running time is filled with dialogue and Pinter's famous pauses.
Without the cast having a keen understanding of Pinter's language and characters, this could have been excruciatingly boring. Depicting one of the worst roommate situations imaginable, where a vagrant is taken in by two emotionally disturbed brothers, the play can flip from cynically hilarious to chilling over the course of a pause. Curious Theatre Branch, though, has a love-affair with the absurd, usually producing original works with the occasional Beckett thrown in for good measure. Directed by the cast along with Jayita Bhattacharya, who also stage manages, the staging of this somewhat baffling masterpiece is darkly visceral yet smartly communicative.
The most relatable character in the play is Davies, a petty, old transient who is both beggar and chooser. Like him, we suddenly find ourselves in the rundown flat that is inhabited by one brother, Aston, yet owned by another, Mick. Alongside Davies, we are slowly submerged into each of their bizarre and intimidating worlds.
This Caretaker values character above all else, and the performances electrify the space; the actors precisely envelope the damaged personalities they portray. Beau O'Reilly's Davies is conniving and manipulative, decayed by xenophobia and a refusal to examine himself. O'Reilly captures Davies' intense neediness as well as his fussiness. Jeffrey Bivens is menacing as Mick, speaking and moving in short bursts like a machine gun. The crowning performance, though, is (Beau's son) Colm O'Reilly's Aston. Quiet and unassuming, Aston speaks in nonsequitors, tossing out random facts about himself that lead to more questions than answers. The young O'Reilly captures the stoic energy of the character, speaking with much less volume than his father's impassioned Davies. His gentle voice works perfectly in the tiny space. The best moment in the production is Aston's marathon monologue describing his experience in a mental ward—O'Reilly barely moves an inch yet the audience is wholly entranced the entire time.
The end result is hauntingly primal. Some moments are stretched a little long, and a bit shorter run time would improve the show. The ending leaves the play wide open for a myriad of interpretations, which can be a more overwhelming than thought-provoking. This Caretaker is also void of British accents, which makes some of the colloquialisms a little out-of-place, but never distracts too much.
The animalistic performances, however, are fascinating to watch. All three actors have a deep respect and love for Pinter's notoriously sharp language. In this production, they reveal Pinter's true genius, his ability to stuff the absurd into the realistic.
The Caretaker / 4 stars
Venus Zarris, Steadstyle Chicago
May 2009
One consistent problem that I see with theater companies, be they old or new, is the inability to take time in the moment. I have seen productions that shine on every level but seem like a blurred train racing by. You catch the obvious features. You see the direction it is headed but the details are lost. Curious Theatre Branch wastes no time in making us sit in the silence of a scene. Like one of those wonderful songs by the Temptations, where you get a two-minute intro that creates atmosphere, rhythm and build before the signing starts, the play opens with a man simply sitting on a bed. Without speech or gesture, the quiet restriction of this opening scene draws us into the world of the play like a peephole that forces your focus to a preordained location. This wordless scene speaks volumes.
Aston brings Davies home after rescuing him from a work altercation that could have landed Davies in jail. They are strangers. Aston is odd and quiet, always tinkering with something in his junk-cluttered attic room. Davies is a transient. The safer he feels, the chattier he gets. Mick, Aston's oddly brutish brother and the owner of the building, shows up and conflict builds between the three idiosyncratic characters that exist on the outskirts of normalcy.
The dilapidated details of the set are as staggering as the details of the characters and their deliberate interactions. I heard more than one gasp as patrons entered the theater. The instability of this world's occupants is established down to the dust itself. Piles of useless crap almost create a hazard while we sidestep the junk to take our seats. Only a mouse or cockroach could make the set more complete. Thankfully, designer Shawn Reddy spares us that finishing touch. The precarious chaos of the set reflects the startling instability of the play's characters.
The most incomparable aspect of Curious Theatre's production is the spellbinding performances. Beau O'Reilly creates Davies as an adult child left to forage for himself. Humble at first and then increasingly demanding, he has no roadmaps to guide him through Aston's detached kindness. Jeff Bivens delivers a whimsically threatening and brilliantly absurd Mick. As Aston, Colm O'Reilly creates a character so subtle, that he haunts the soul, so melancholy that he quietly tears at the heart. His controlled use of tone and cadence is organic and uncanny.
Curious Theatre Branch's The Caretaker is a uniquely profound piece of delicate and intense theater. If restraint is what makes the artists, these are masters at work. This rare and wonderful accomplishment will linger with you long after the play is over.
