There were high expectations for the revival of Harold Pinter’s “The Caretaker” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Starring Tony Award winner Jonathan Pryce (“Miss Saigon”), the production got raves across the pond. But it proves frustrating, and not for the reasons one might expect.
This 1960 classic, like so many of the playwright’s works, is deliberately enigmatic. Given the proper treatment, its adroit blending of menace and humor can be fascinating. Unfortunately, this Theatre Royal Bath/Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse production is distancing in more ways than one.
It concerns a shabbily dressed tramp, Davies (Jonathan Pryce), who is inexplicably invited by two brothers to become caretaker of their ramshackle building. Occupying the attic apartment is Aston (Alan Cox), whose haltingly timid manner is explained by a harrowing monologue in which he recounts disastrous electric shock treatments at a mental hospital.
His younger sibling Mick (Alex Hassell) is alternately intimidating and jovial. Wearing tight jeans and a black leather jacket, he can make the innocuous question “What’s the game?” seem sinister while in the next moment nonsensically telling Davies that “You remind me of my uncle’s brother.”
At first the wily tramp attempts to exploit the situation by pitting the brothers against each another. But, as the play goes on, the emotional dynamics shift constantly. This sort of power struggle is a constant theme in Pinter’s works, and, with the possible exception of “The Homecoming,” he has never handled it in such vivid fashion.
For the play to entirely succeed there has to be an air of danger that is only sporadically achieved here. Partly it’s a result of director Christopher Morahan’s emphasis on the absurdist humor, such as a bit in which the trio passes around a suitcase as if performing an old vaudeville routine.
But it’s also because the production seems lost in the vast Harvey space, where the playing area is set so far back that we never feel like in the same room with these bizarre characters.
Another problem is the thick Welsh accent Pryce employs that renders some of his lines unintelligible. And while his canny turn is frequently amusing, he fails to provide the menacing swagger that such actors as Donald Pleasance and Michael Gambon brought to the role.
Hassell and Cox offer sterling support, and Eileen Diss’ set — featuring endless piles of bric-a-brac and an overhead bucket capturing scarily amplified rainwater drops — is marvelously dilapidated. But this “Caretaker,” while respectable, is never galvanizing.