The Caretaker was first performed at the Arts Theatre Club, London, in April 1960 and was Pinter’s commercial and critical breakthrough — the play that made him famous. Three characters occupy a junk-filled room in a West London house: Aston, a quiet, damaged man who has undergone electroconvulsive therapy; Mick, his brother, aggressive and linguistically brilliant; and Davies, a tramp Aston has brought home from the street.
The play’s action is the struggle for position between these three men — who belongs in the room, who has authority, who is needed, who can be expelled. Davies, initially grateful for shelter, gradually attempts to establish himself as permanent resident and to play the brothers against each other; Mick, who owns the house, alternately befriends and terrorizes Davies; Aston, who invited him in, eventually asks him to leave. The structure is one of Pinter’s recurring patterns: the outsider who enters a space and disrupts the existing equilibrium, only to be expelled when the inhabitants close ranks.
The language is Pinter’s greatest achievement here: the characters’ speech is simultaneously naturalistic (these people talk the way real people talk — with hesitations, repetitions, non sequiturs) and highly patterned (the rhythms of dominance and submission, assertion and retreat are as precisely orchestrated as music). The famous “pauses” — indicated in the stage directions — are not dead time but moments of maximum dramatic tension, when what is not said carries more weight than what is.
Collecting The Caretaker
First edition (Methuen, London, 1960): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $150–$400
- Without jacket: $30–$75
- Signed copies: $400–$1000