The Caretaker

The Theatre Company of Boston, not yet four months old and struggling to become established, is presenting an extraordinary production of "The Caretaker." In the intimate theatre at the Hotel Bostonian, author Harold Pinter, director David Wheeler, and the cast of three, transpose the problem--long a scientific enigma--of the interaction of three bodies into human terms with such brilliance that one perceives a solution: the problem is impossible.

In "The Caretaker" the three bodies are two schizophrenic brothers and a bum. The younger brother, Mick (Donald Berry), has given a dilapidated old house to his brother Aston (James Leo Herlihy) so that Aston will have a job: fixing up the house. It is into the small, cluttered garret of this house--Aston's bedroom--that Aston brings a sly, slavering vagrant, Davies (Richard Shepard), for shelter.

Strangely, in the course of the play (though very long, it seems short in this production), Mick remains fixed: passionately protective of his brother, yet reserved to the point of paralysis in his presence; liable to manic outbreaks and attacks on Davies, and prodded by his own dreams of progress. Aston, his brother, also does not change: ever dreamy, ever puttering with broken appliances in the expertly littered set of Bonny Wooldridge, he never raises his voice, never moves suddenly.

Only the bum Davies evolves. The transformation from an amusing parasite to a hateful, leaching, divisive worm startles, because afterwards one knows the worm was there in the parasite, but one did not see it. And as Davies is transformed, the three bodies move off into their skewwed, non-interesting orbits.

In spite of the tatic nature of most of his role, Herlihy made clear one mutation, when, in the face of Davies' increasing demands, he asserted himself. Of the three, Herlihy's performance was the most striking; mad roles are usually strong, but Herlihy captured the muscular slackness, wandering eyes, broken sentences, and general indirection of some real schizophrenics with astonishing exactitude. It is very unfortunate that he has been obliged to leave the play in the middle of its run; his replacement, Paul Benedict, will have a hard time filling the role as well.

"The Caretaker" is only the fifth program the Theatre Company of Boston has put on. Its programs this summer (plays, but not the warhorses, by Albee, Ionesco, Beckett, and Genet) and this one are of a sophistication which should prove very attractive to the Cambridge community; fortunately there are student prices at times on Saturday and Sunday. One cannot say what this "Caretaker" will be like without Herlihy, but if it is anywhere near as revealing as the production with him, it will be worth the time and money to see it.