The Caretaker
Published on 4. March 1991
Book
Paperback/Softback
144 pages
978-0-571-16079-2 (ISBN)
Description
You remind me of my uncle's brother. He was always on the move, that man. Never without his passport. Had an eye for the girls. Very much your build. Bit of an athlete. Long-jump specialist. He had a habit of demonstrating different run-ups in the drawing-room round about Christmas time. Had a penchant for nuts.
In a dilapidated house in West London, three men - kind but damaged Aston, the shambling tramp he invites to stay, and Aston's violently unpredictable brother Mick - fall into an unsettling and darkly funny tussle for power.
The Caretaker was first performed at the Arts Theatre, London, in April 1960.
'There's such craft and concision to Pinter's depiction of a triangular territorial battle in a run-down West London attic that it still sets the bar inspirationally high. The play is both of its period and timeless, conveying the wider human condition in its tightly particular evocation of hardship and dispossession, its dialogue so wryly attuned to the way ordinary speech can be loaded and weaponised that it even got its own classification: "the comedy of menace".' Daily Telegraph
'A modern classic, a spiritual shocker, tough, cruel and brutally funny . . . Pinter transfixes the modern human condition in which people are both intruders and prisoners, aggressors and victims, pushers and fantasists. This is your life.' Sunday Times
In a dilapidated house in West London, three men - kind but damaged Aston, the shambling tramp he invites to stay, and Aston's violently unpredictable brother Mick - fall into an unsettling and darkly funny tussle for power.
The Caretaker was first performed at the Arts Theatre, London, in April 1960.
'There's such craft and concision to Pinter's depiction of a triangular territorial battle in a run-down West London attic that it still sets the bar inspirationally high. The play is both of its period and timeless, conveying the wider human condition in its tightly particular evocation of hardship and dispossession, its dialogue so wryly attuned to the way ordinary speech can be loaded and weaponised that it even got its own classification: "the comedy of menace".' Daily Telegraph
'A modern classic, a spiritual shocker, tough, cruel and brutally funny . . . Pinter transfixes the modern human condition in which people are both intruders and prisoners, aggressors and victims, pushers and fantasists. This is your life.' Sunday Times
More details
Edition
Main
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
Primary & secondary/elementary & high school
Dimensions
Height: 203 mm
Width: 131 mm
Thickness: 12 mm
Weight
156 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-571-16079-2 (9780571160792)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Harold Pinter was born in London in 1930. He lived with Antonia Fraser from 1975 and they married in 1980. In 1995 he won the David Cohen British Literature Prize, awarded for a lifetime's achievement in literature. In 1996 he was given the Laurence Olivier Award for a lifetime's achievement in theatre. In 2002 he was made a Companion of Honour for services to literature. In 2005 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and, in the same year, the Wilfred Owen Award for Poetry and the Franz Kafka Award (Prague). In 2006 he was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize and, in 2007, the highest French honour, the Legion d'honneur. He died in December 2008.