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The Caretaker
Nov. 18th, 2006 01:34 amTonight, I got a rush ticket to see the Caretaker (by Harold Pinter) at the Soulpepper theatre. I have to do this sort of thing more often. It was fun just turning up and getting a front row seat for a third of the full price.
When Pinter (husband of Antonia Fraser, by the way) won the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature, I got interested in this playwright and read several of his plays within a couple of weeks. Looking back, the plays have blended together in my mind - pregnant pauses, the mundane morphing into menace, and a general sense of what "Pinteresque" means. The writing was very good, and showed me (as K. had hoped) that writing could be "mythic" without being about magic/fantasy or in anyway genre. Pinter's characters belong to both the real world but also some heightened mythic realm of the theatre.
Anyway, a former co-worker (knowing of my Pinter binge) mentioned that Soulpepper was doing the Caretaker. As I often do with theatre reviews, I forwarded some to K. and she noted that Richard Ouzounian's review from the Star was somewhat critical but praised one actor quite a bit. And K. suggested that even one actor doing Pinter justice would make the evening worthwhile.
Fortunately, my memory being a sieve, I forgot which actor Richard O. praised. It allowed me to make up my own mind, and it turns out -- checking the review now -- that we judged the actors in pretty much the same way.
Diego Matamoros make an okay Davies, although less edgy than I pictured him. Damien Atkins wasn't quite as good as Aston. And through the first act, I felt something was lacking. The words were good, but the show was lacking the spark I got from reading Pinter's plays. The Pinter pauses -- well, they weren't really pausing at all.
But then, in the last minute of the first act, Matthew Edison arrived as Mick, set a lightbulb swinging and demanded to know "What's the game?" I felt a bolt of lightning shoot through the theatre. Now THIS was Pinter. Edison had both humour and genuine threat. His scenes were crackling with energy, an electricity that was lacking any time Edison was off the stage.
Edison could command the room when the lights were up and all the characters on stage. But Atkins, even when the stage was black except for his spotlight, couldn't command that sort of attention.
But Edison's performance. That was what I felt when I read the plays. That was my conception of Pinter made flesh.
So, yes, it was worth going to see.
I also have decided that I need to check out the Distillery District in daylight. It looked beautiful, but slightly sinister at night. But then, after Pinter, everything seems slightly sinister.
Allen
When Pinter (husband of Antonia Fraser, by the way) won the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature, I got interested in this playwright and read several of his plays within a couple of weeks. Looking back, the plays have blended together in my mind - pregnant pauses, the mundane morphing into menace, and a general sense of what "Pinteresque" means. The writing was very good, and showed me (as K. had hoped) that writing could be "mythic" without being about magic/fantasy or in anyway genre. Pinter's characters belong to both the real world but also some heightened mythic realm of the theatre.
Anyway, a former co-worker (knowing of my Pinter binge) mentioned that Soulpepper was doing the Caretaker. As I often do with theatre reviews, I forwarded some to K. and she noted that Richard Ouzounian's review from the Star was somewhat critical but praised one actor quite a bit. And K. suggested that even one actor doing Pinter justice would make the evening worthwhile.
Fortunately, my memory being a sieve, I forgot which actor Richard O. praised. It allowed me to make up my own mind, and it turns out -- checking the review now -- that we judged the actors in pretty much the same way.
Diego Matamoros make an okay Davies, although less edgy than I pictured him. Damien Atkins wasn't quite as good as Aston. And through the first act, I felt something was lacking. The words were good, but the show was lacking the spark I got from reading Pinter's plays. The Pinter pauses -- well, they weren't really pausing at all.
But then, in the last minute of the first act, Matthew Edison arrived as Mick, set a lightbulb swinging and demanded to know "What's the game?" I felt a bolt of lightning shoot through the theatre. Now THIS was Pinter. Edison had both humour and genuine threat. His scenes were crackling with energy, an electricity that was lacking any time Edison was off the stage.
Edison could command the room when the lights were up and all the characters on stage. But Atkins, even when the stage was black except for his spotlight, couldn't command that sort of attention.
But Edison's performance. That was what I felt when I read the plays. That was my conception of Pinter made flesh.
So, yes, it was worth going to see.
I also have decided that I need to check out the Distillery District in daylight. It looked beautiful, but slightly sinister at night. But then, after Pinter, everything seems slightly sinister.
Allen
