'The Caretaker' has something for everyone

Two brothers and a bum.

That's not the start to a bad joke, rather it's the way the late playwright Harold Pinter described his work "The Caretaker."

"It sounds flippant to describe it that way," said actor Joe Cronin, "but if you pick one theme you're ignoring the other."

Cronin, who takes on the daunting role of the bum Davies, chatted by phone before a recent rehearsal.

"I see lots of themes: time, mortality, relationships. … Everyone can come out with something different. There is something for everyone."

But Pinter himself isn't for everyone.

"He's not everybody's cup of tea," said director John Vreeke. "Pinter is a very brilliant poet and playwright, right down to punctuation. This is a poetic language play."

Pinter is known for lengthy monologues and dramatic pauses. "You learn how to play the language, like you learn how to play a piece of music," Vreeke said.

"The challenge is learning the score as written; all the pauses, periods and commas. Once that is learned, which is a formidable task, then you can really interpret the play."

And that is an interesting undertaking.

"Theater of the Absurd is a tricky genre," Vreeke said. "It was a group of writers who wrote in the '50s and '60s. They were atheists and had a pretty grim world-view. These writers take that kind of moral conundrum, 'What are we doing in this world,' and they place the stories and characters out there to make the audience ask those questions."

But plays of this genre rarely provide answers.

"There are certain mysteries in the play that are never really answered," Vreeke said. "I think any good writing, really, really good writing doesn't answer questions, but it asks lots of great questions."

"There have been volumes written about this play," Vreeke said, "but Pinter never wanted to state what the play was really about, other than two brothers and a bum. After that it's for the audience to make a decision."

"Although the characters look bizarre and think and speak in bizarre ways, they represent something everyone experiences," said actor Cronin, who has been to Utah numerous times, performing at both SLAC and the Utah Shakespearean Festival. "The caretaker has so much meaning for all of the various relationships in the play."

With Pinter's death in December of 2008, this is also a memorial presentation. "Pinter is a classic modern writer," Cronin said. "He'll be remembered for a long time."

"We're doing the play as Pinter wrote it," Vreeke said. "It's a 40-year-old play, so it's really not old enough to be reinvented, and there's not reason to. It's as pertinent in '09 as it was in '52 when he wrote it."

"Not everybody likes Pinter," he said, "but our job is to do everything we can to create a compelling moment-to-moment experience. Which will, hopefully, keep the audience on the edge of its seat. Compelling human behavior is always what we enjoy watching."

If you go …

What: "The Caretaker"

Where: Salt Lake Acting Company

When: Sept. 15- Oct. 11, times vary

How Much: $18-$37

Phone: 801-363-7522

Web: www.saltlakeactingcompany.org

e-mail: ehansen@desnews.com