Tennessee Williams and Harold Pinter aren’t usually thought of as joined-at-the-hip dramatists.
The former favored florid self-dramatizing southern gothic tragedy, while the latter is famous for what isn’t said in his “comedies of menace” peppered with those oft-analyzed pauses. But thanks to Writers’ Theatre, I now see both as masters of domestic, territorial battles that contain seeds of larger societal shifts.
Just as David Cromer did in his justly celebrated production of Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” in 2010, Ron OJ Parson turns Pinter’s breakthrough 1960 play into a primal fight over who gets to stay and who has to go.
“The Caretaker” follows the shifts in alliances among two brothers—leather-jacketed and self-confident Mick and gentle but troubled Aston—and the dodgy homeless codger, Davies (if that’s his real name) that Aston brings home to his junk-laden London flat. By casting Mick and Aston with actors of South Asian descent (the immensely gifted pair of Kareem Bandealy and Anish Jethmalani), the racism and xenophobia of William J. Norris’ crusty and self-pitying Davies becomes the death rattle of the old British empire facing a post-war multicultural world.
Raging against “the blacks” next door and remarking that customers in cafes “want an Englishman to pour their tea,” Davies embodies every “native” who believes “those people” are taking away his birthright. Though incapable of keeping a job himself and dependent on the charity of Aston, he cavils and complains about everything from the quality of the shoes Aston finds to replace his decrepit boots to the draft from the window. Once Davies learns of Aston’s seeming Achilles heel—a nightmarish journey through a state hospital that Jethmalani unpeels with unnerving but calm intensity—the conniving old coot is perfectly willing to throw in his lot with Mick and conspire to toss his benefactor out.
Despite the close quarters in the Books on Vernon space, Parson’s staging still keeps just enough of an emotional distance to remind us that we’re in Pinter’s world, where everything is just slightly off-kilter. Jack Magaw’s cunningly detailed set rides the fine line between realism and surrealism, with its slanting walls and that controversial window that looks out upon nothing (a possible hat-tip to Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame”). Jethmalani’s Aston is by far the most sympathetic character here, but Bandealy’s Mick seems less like the East End hood one usually sees in the role and more like a second-generation immigrant wheeler-dealer. And Norris (one of the treasures of Chicago theater) nails Davies’ wheedling nature and self-absorbed sense of entitlement.
Parson doesn’t imbue this production with the threat of immediate physical danger, which may be a drawback for those who like their Pinter on the knife’s edge. But by opening up “The Caretaker” to the larger demographic realities, he and his trio of mesmerizing actors throw open a window that lets us see Pinter’s world—and ours—in a disturbing and achingly contemporary light.
“The Caretaker” continues through March 25, 2012 at Writers’ Theatre. For tickets and details, see writerstheatre.org or call 847-242-6000.
