The Caretaker Pinter Pdf
Care.com is the world's largest online destination for care. We connect families with caregivers and caring companies to help you be there for the ones you love. Care.com does not employ any care provider or care seeker nor is it responsible for the conduct of any care provider or care seeker.
Care.com provides information and tools to help care seekers and care providers connect and make informed decisions. However, each individual is solely responsible for selecting an appropriate care provider or care seeker for themselves or their families and for complying with all applicable laws in connection with any employment relationship they establish. The information contained in member profiles, job posts and applications are supplied by care providers and care seekers themselves and is not information generated or verified by Care.com.
Care.com does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment or engage in any conduct that requires a professional license. Care.com and 'There for you' are service marks or registered service marks of Care.com, Inc. © 2007-2018 Care.com, Inc. All rights reserved. Care.com® HomePaySM is a service provided by Breedlove and Associates, LLC, a Care.com company.
. Mick, a man in his late twenties. Aston, a man in his early thirties. Davies, an old man Date premiered 27 April 1960 Place premiered, London Original language English Setting A house in West London. The Caretaker is a play in three acts. Although it was the sixth of his major works for stage and television, this psychological study of the confluence of power, allegiance, innocence, and corruption among two brothers and a tramp, became Pinter's first significant commercial success.
The Caretaker Script - Download as Word Doc (.doc), PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online. The Caretaker Pinter Text. The Caretaker Harold Pinter. The Caretaker by Harold Pinter. The Caretaker 1 This page intentionally left blank Mansoor Ahmed Khan.
It premiered at the in London's West End on 27 April 1960 and transferred to the the following month, where it ran for 444 performances before departing London for Broadway. In 1964, a of the play based on Pinter's unpublished screenplay was directed. The movie starred as Mick and as Davies in their original stage roles, while replaced as Aston. First published by both and in 1960, The Caretaker remains one of Pinter's most celebrated and oft-performed plays.
Contents. Plot summary Act I A night in winter Scene 1 Aston has invited Davies, a homeless man, into his flat after rescuing him from a bar fight (7–9). Davies comments on the flat and criticises the fact that it is cluttered and badly kept.
Aston attempts to find a pair of shoes for Davies but Davies rejects all the offers. Once he turns down a pair that doesn't fit well enough and another that has the wrong colour laces. Early on, Davies reveals to Aston that his real name is not 'Bernard Jenkins', his 'assumed name', but really 'Mac Davies' (19–20, 25). He claims that his papers validating this fact are in and that he must and will return there to retrieve them just as soon as he has a good pair of shoes.
Aston and Davies discuss where he will sleep and the problem of the 'bucket' attached to the ceiling to catch dripping rain water from the leaky roof (20–21) and Davies ' gets into bed' while 'ASTON sits, poking his electrical plug (21). Scene 2 The LIGHTS FADE OUT. (21) As Aston dresses for the day, Davies awakes with a start, and Aston informs Davies that he was kept up all night by Davies muttering in his sleep. Davies denies that he made any noise and blames the racket on the neighbours, revealing his fear of foreigners: 'I tell you what, maybe it were them Blacks' (23). This article needs additional citations for. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2009) Aston When he was younger he was given electric shock therapy that leaves him permanently brain damaged.
His efforts to appease the ever-complaining Davies may be seen as an attempt to reach out to others. He desperately seeks a connection in the wrong place and with the wrong people. His main obstacle is his inability to communicate.
He is misunderstood by his closest relative, his brother, and thus is completely isolated in his existence. His good-natured attitude makes him vulnerable to exploitation. His dialogue is sparse and often a direct response to something Mick or Davies has said. Aston has dreams of building a shed.
The shed to him may represent all the things his life lacks: accomplishment and structure. The shed represents hope for the future. Davies Davies manufactures the story of his life, lying or sidestepping some details to avoid telling the whole truth about himself. A non-sequitur.
He adjusts aspects of the story of his life according to the people he is trying to impress, influence, or manipulate. As Billington points out, 'When Mick suggests that Davies might have been in the services — and even the colonies, Davies retorts: 'I was over there. I was one of the first over there.' He defines himself according to momentary imperatives and other people's suggestions' (122). Mick At times violent and ill-tempered, Mick is ambitious. He talks above Davies' ability to comprehend him.
His increasing dissatisfaction with Davies leads to a rapprochement with his brother, Aston; though he appears to have distanced himself from Aston prior to the opening of the play, by the end, they exchange a few words and a faint smile. Early in the play, when he first encounters him, Mick attacks Davies, taking him for an intruder in his brother Aston's abode: an attic room of a run-down house which Mick looks after and in which he enables his brother to live. At first, he is aggressive toward Davies.
Later, it may be that by suggesting that Davies could be 'caretaker' of both his house and his brother, Mick is attempting to shift responsibility from himself onto Davies, who hardly seems a viable candidate for such tasks. The disparities between the loftiness of Mick's 'dreams' and needs for immediate results and the mundane realities of Davies's neediness and shifty non-committal nature creates much of the absurdity of the play. Style. Further information: The language and plot of The Caretaker blends Realism with the. In the Theatre of the Absurd language is used in a manner that heightens the audience's awareness of the language itself, often through repetition and circumventing dialogue. The play has often been compared to, by, and other absurdist plays because of its apparent lack of plot and action.
The fluidity of the characters is explained by Ronald Knowles as follows: 'Language, character, and being are here aspects of each other made manifest in speech and silence. Character is no longer the clearly perceived entity underlying clarity of articulation the objectification of a social and moral entelechy but something amorphous and contingent (41). Language. See also:, and One of the keys to understanding Pinter's language is not to rely on the words a character says but to look for the meaning behind the text. The Caretaker is filled with long rants and non-sequiturs, the language is either choppy dialogue full of interruptions or long speeches that are a vocalised train of thought. Although the text is presented in a casual way, there is always a message behind its simplicity.
Pinter is often concerned with 'communication itself, or rather the deliberate evasion of communication' (Knowles 43). The play's staccato language and rhythms are musically balanced through strategically placed pauses. Pinter toys with silence, where it is used in the play and what emphasis it places on the words when they are at last spoken. Mode of drama: Tragicomedy The Caretaker is a drama of mixed modes; both tragic and comic, it is a. Elements of comedy appear in the monologues of Davies and Mick, and the characters' interactions at times even approach. For instance, the first scene of Act Two, which critics have compared to the hat and shoe sequences in Beckett'sis particularly farcical: ASTON offers the bag to DAVIES. MICK grabs it.
ASTON takes it. MICK grabs it. DAVIES reaches for it. ASTON takes it. MICK reaches for it.
ASTON gives it to DAVIES. MICK grabs it. (39) Davies' confusion, repetitions, and attempts to deceive both brothers and to play each one off against the other are also farcical. Davies has pretended to be someone else and using an assumed name, 'Bernard Jenkins'. But, in response to separate inquiries by Aston and Mick, it appears that Davies' real name is not really 'Bernard Jenkins' but that it is 'Mac Davies' (as Pinter designates him 'Davies' throughout) and that he is actually and not English, a fact that he is attempting to conceal throughout the play and that motivates him to 'get down to ', the past location of a Records Office, to get his identity 'papers' (13–16). The elements of occur in Aston's climactic monologue about his shock treatments in 'that place' and at the end of the play, though the ending is still somewhat ambiguous: at the very end, it appears that the brothers are turning Davies, an old homeless man, out of what may be his last chance for shelter, mainly because of his (and their) inabilities to adjust socially to one another, or their respective ' qualities. Interpretation In his 1960 book review of The Caretaker, fellow English playwright writes: 'Taken purely at its face value this play is a study of the unexpected strength of family ties against an intruder.'
As Arden states, family relationships are one of the main thematic concerns of the play. Another prevalent theme is the characters' inability to communicate productively with one another.
The play depends more on dialogue than on action; however, though there are fleeting moments in which each of them does seem to reach some understanding with the other, more often, they avoid communicating with one another as a result of their own psychological insecurities and self-concerns. The theme of isolation appears to result from the characters' inability to communicate with one another, and the characters' own insularity seems to exacerbate their difficulty communicating with others. As the characters also engage in deceiving one another and themselves, deception and self-deception are motifs, and certain deceptive phrases and self-deceptive strategies recur as refrains throughout the dialogue.
Davies uses an assumed name and has convinced himself that he is really going to resolve his problems relating to his lack of identity papers, even though he appears too lazy to take any such responsibility for his own actions and blames his inaction on everyone but himself. Aston believes that his dream of building a shed will eventually reach fruition, despite his mental disability. Mick believes that his ambitions for a successful career outweigh his responsibility to care for his mentally damaged brother. In the end however all three men are deceiving themselves. Their lives may continue on beyond the end of the play just as they are at the beginning and throughout it. The deceit and isolation in the play lead to a world where time, place, identity, and language are ambiguous and fluid. Production history Premiere On 27 April 1960, the first production of The Caretaker opened at the, in London, prior to transferring to the 's on 30 May 1960.
It starred as Davies, as Mick, and as Aston. The productions received generally strong reviews. Other notable productions and major revivals Information about some productions comes from the section on The Caretaker in HaroldPinter.org. 1961 – Lyceum Theatre, New York City, on 4 October 1961 by Roger L.
Stevens, Frederick Brisson, and Gilbert Miller. Setting: Bert Currah, Sets Supervised and lighting: Paul Morrison, Production Supervisor: Fred Herbert, Stage Manager/Understudy: Cast: Alan Bates (Mick), Donald Pleasence (Davies), and (Aston). Galens, David M., ed. Detroit: Gale. Literature Resource Center. Retrieved 4 September 2012. Retrieved 28 May 2009.
^ Alfred Hickling, 13 Mar. 2009, 28 May 2009. In, an account of staging the play for the, in New York City, published by director in the Fall 2003 issue of Front & Center Online, the 'online version of the Roundabout Theatre Company's subscriber magazine.' . See, e.g., Leonard Powlick, ' 'What the hell is that all about?' A Peak at Pinter's Dramaturgy', Harold Pinter: Critical Approaches, ed.
Gale (Cranbury, NJ: Associated UP, 1986) 32., book review of The Caretaker, New Theatre Mag. 1.4 (July 1960): 29–30. See, e.g., T.
Worsley, 'Immensely Funny, Disturbing and Moving', 28 April 1960: 'The Caretaker is both a wonderful piece of theatre, immensely funny, rich in observation, and below that level a disturbing and moving experience.' Other reviews transcribed in the section on this production on Pinter's official website, HaroldPinter.org. The 1962 playbill of the American Shakespeare Festival mentions that Joel Fabiani 'uderstudied the roles of Mick and Aston last fall in the Broadway production of 'The Undertaker' '. Brian Richardson, Performance review of The Caretaker, Studio Theatre (Washington D.C.), 12 September 1993, The Pinter Review: Annual Essays 1994, ed. Francis Gillen and Steven H.
Gale (Tampa: U of Tampa P, 1994) 109-10: 'Here, real objects and stylized representations alternate and the three vertical structures of the set though not symmetrical, balance each other in a rough though pleasing harmony.' . (archived past seasons)., n.d.
13 March 2009. (Run at Sheffield Theatres ended on 11 November 2006.). For a review of the production, see Lyn Gardner, Culture: Theatre., 20 October 2006. 12 March 2009. BBC.co.uk. Bristol Old Vic Works cited.
Book review of The Caretaker,. New Theatre Mag.
English Studies In Africa
1.4 (July 1960): 29–30. Harold Pinter. London:, 2007. Updated 2nd ed. Of The Life and Work of Harold Pinter. London: Faber and Faber, 1997. Esslin, Martin.
New York:, 2004. Hickling, Alfred., 13 March 2009. Of production directed by Mark Babych.). Front & Center Online., Fall 2003.
12 March 2009. ('Online version of the Roundabout Theatre Company's subscriber magazine.' ) Knowles, Roland. The Birthday Party and The Caretaker: Text and Performance. London:, 1988. Naismith, Bill.
Harold Pinter. Faber Critical Guides. London:, 2000. The Caretaker: A Play in Three Acts. London: Co., 1960. OCLC 10322991.
The Caretaker and The Dumb Waiter: Two Plays by Harold Pinter 1960. New York:, 1988.
Powlick, Leonard. ' 'What the hell is that all about?' A Peek at Pinter's Dramaturgy.' Harold Pinter: Critical Approaches.
Cranbury, NJ:, 1986. Richardson, Brian. Performance review of The Caretaker, Studio Theatre (Washington D.C.), 12 September 1993. The Pinter Review: Annual Essays 1994. Francis Gillen and Steven H. Tampa: U of Tampa P, 1994. Scott, Michael, ed.
Harold Pinter: The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, The Homecoming: A Case Book. London:, 1986. External links. at the. – From the 'Plays' section of HaroldPinter.org: The Official Website of the International Playwright Harold Pinter (Includes details of productions and excerpts from reviews.). – Synopsis and analysis at eNotes.com.