Reviews 2006
Reviews 2006
✭✭✭✩✩
by Harold Pinter, directed by Albert Schultz
Soulpepper Theatre Company, Young Centre, Toronto
November 1-25, 2006
Soulpepper’s production of Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker (1960) is a perfect follow-up to its King Lear since both plays examine the question of what obligation people have to take care of others. Director Albert Schultz has mustered an excellent cast, but he stages the play in the round which alleviates its claustrophobia and has sentimentalized the characters thus all but dissipating the tension in a play that should crackle with it.
Since his release from a mental hospital, Aston (Damien Atkins) spends his time collecting and trying to repair useless things. Now he has saved an old tramp Davies (Diego Matamoros) from danger and brought him home to his room in a dilapidated building owned by his younger brother Mick (Matthew Edison). Aston says Davies can stay until he sorts himself out, but Mick views Davies as an interloper and a classic Pinterian struggle for dominance and territory ensues.
The fine cast would excel under more incisive direction. Matamoros captures the humour in the hapless Davies but little of the repulsiveness in this blatant racist so willing to play brother against brother. Edison has Mick’s cool demeanour down but every word he says to Davies should, unlike here, sting and taunt. Atkins gives a beautifully judged performance, but Schultz focusses solely on his private pain not Davies’ indifference to it.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2006-11-09.
Photo: Matthew Edison and Diego Matamoros. ©Cylla von Tiedemann.
2006-11-09
The Caretaker