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[THEATER REVIEW] The Caretaker at Berkshire Theatre Festival
6.12.08
BERKSHIRE THEATER FESTIVAL
The Caretaker by Harold Pinter
Unicorn Theatre
Through June 28
by Seth Rogovoy
(Stockbridge, Mass., June 8, 2008) -- In his stripped-down laconicism, his minimalist staging, his inscrutability of plot and theme, and his purposeful mystification of language, Harold Pinter could well be the anti-Shakespeare.
And in becoming the anti-Shakespeare, the British playwright could well be the greatest English playwright since Shakespeare himself.
For some strange reason, however, Pinter is rarely staged outside of major metropolitan areas, and you could turn blue in the face for a decade or so holding your breath waiting for one of the Berkshire summer theaters to stage a Pinter play. Which has what has led me on more than one occasion to beg Shakespeare & Company to devote at least one summer to changing its name and format to Pinter & Company. Or even better yet, to running Shakespeare alongside Pinter -- wouldn't THAT be a hoot, and undoubtedly a revealing and resonant one at that.
Short of all this, we DO have the Berkshire Theatre Festival's fine production of Pinter's sinister breakthrough comedy, The Caretaker, running through June 28 at the Unicorn Theatre.
And what a welcome whiff of Pinter it is.
As we have come to expect in recent years, the stagecraft itself is impeccable, with pitch-perfect, appropriately moody lighting by Matthew E. Adelson and evocative scenic design -- basically constructing a rathole for a slumdweller -- by Jonathan Wentz.
This time out the sound and music by J Hagenbuckle is a little too overwrought -- a little too "Creature Features," underlining the obvious during blackouts and scenic transitions. As in all of Pinter, less would have been more in this case. The last thing The Caretaker needs is a soundtrack to suggest that what's happening on stage is even more scary or horrible than it already is.
Fortunately, however, what's most important is what happens onstage through the medium of the three actors, the brothers Mick and Aston (played perfectly by James Barry and Tommy Schrider, respectively) and the uninvited guest, Jonathan Epstein, in a wonderfully understated performance that finds one of Berkshire's best known actors burying himself fully in a role for the first time in several years. One can't stop watching Barry, wondering which of his two personalities will come to the fore, and Tommy Schrider's Aston is a painfully difficult work of thespianism bordering on zen meditation.
And as with Shakespeare, the most important thing in the staging of a Pinter play is that the actors respect the language, and all seem to have that as their common aim. Pinter is actually that rare playwright who reads as well or even better on the page than on stage, and that's because it's all in the language (Shakespeare is a lot like this, too, come to think). The production does its best to honor fully that language, and as a result, the audience is treated to a riveting, brutish drama, where the laughs come out of anxiety, tension, and discomfort, rather than jokes -- theater of cruelty at its best.
This may not be the stuff of a box-office bonanza, but in terms of serving a discerning theatergoing public, Berkshire Theatre Festival is off to a searing start to its eightieth anniversary season with Pinter's The Caretaker.
Seth Rogovoy is editor-in-chief and critic-at-large at BERKSHIRE LIVING Magazine.
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