A comedy of menace presented in a cargo shed full of junk, where you are not quite sure what's happening, is an exciting Fortune Theatre project for Arts Festival Dunedin. Charmian Smith reports.
Harold Pinter's The Caretaker was one of the plays that changed the face of British theatre in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Presented by the Fortune Theatre at Shed 40 in Fryatt St, it opens on Saturday and is part of Arts Festival Dunedin.
Before Pinter, John Osbourne and other ''angry young men'', theatre in Britain had been drawing-room comedies and drama with nicely dressed, well-spoken characters.
Pinter and others took theatre to the grubbier parts of the house, the kitchen sink and working-class characters.
''It suddenly touched the pulse of the people,'' says actor Ken Blackburn.
''Pinter and Osbourne and others put their finger on the absurdity of life and the mundanity of life that people were actually experiencing. Here was a chance to enjoy that and share it at a level of reality which they hadn't experienced with nicely costumed plays up to that point,'' he said.
Director Lara Macgregor said they so enjoyed presenting Beckett's Play at the previous festival, she wanted to try a bigger event with a work of the same era and to perform off site to expand on what they did last time.
''But I suppose the fundamental thing is the play's great and it hasn't been done for a long time, but apart from all that, I love the junk,'' she said with a laugh.
The play is set in a shabby flat full of junk and Shed 40 would support the nature of the play, she said.
''I wanted the audience to not have any idea what's going on, to have a bit of a laugh but also have a little bit of fear with the uncertainty of it all, and to be surrounded and immersed in this - really what it is is mental health junk. Audiences will be seated on random bits of furniture. It will be cold - they are probably going to need to wear thermals and bring a hot water bottle, if they are smart.''
In the play, the junk has been collected by Aston for goodness knows how long and saved for a rainy day. Much of it is unfinished projects, she said.
''Even the opening moment, when Davies comes into the room for the first time with Aston and the place is so filled you can barely move for junk and Aston says `sit down', there's actually nowhere to sit - it's very funny.''
The Caretaker is about two working-class brothers who allow a homeless man to stay in their decrepit London flat, an act of compassion that sparks a cycle of cruelties, delusions and shifting loyalties in a struggle over territory.
Macgregor and the cast, Ken Blackburn, Kip Chapman and Jason Whyte, call it a comedy of menace.
''It's quite funny and charming in a terrifying way,'' Chapman said.
''Menace is a lot more interesting than violence, I think, because menace plays on your imagination. Violence is a blunt thing, whereas menace is a lot more layered and complex.''
Macgregor adds: ''You are never sure what can happen; you are not sure who's going to come in the door; you are not sure who is lurking in the dark; you are not sure what this relationship is. Davies and Aston are the first characters we get to know and you are just not quite sure what that relationship is and where it's going to go; the uncertainty, the instability of not only these three human beings, but the environment they are in.''
Whyte, who plays Aston, a man isolated in his own mind who has been given electric shock treatment at one stage, says he's been noticing lonely people in the street.
''They have lives too, but what are those lives?'' He was affected by the recent Ashburton Winz shooting and wonders if social services have moved on from the 1960s.
''I keep thinking about the man - also the poor families of the people who were at work - but I think about the man and what factors made him do that.''
Blackburn, who plays Davies, says the homeless man who is taken in by the brothers and offered the job of caretaker is a survivor and manipulator.
''Creative ways in which to survive is part of Davies' philosophy of manipulating people in order to get by. He's got a comfortable hole here. The longer he can stay, the better he'll be pleased. In fact, if he can end up taking over, that would be supreme,'' he said.
''I can identify with Davies' intention, if not his condition, because he's a survivor, he's a manipulator. I reflect quite a lot back on childhood, when I went through the Blitz in the Second World War. You learned to become streetwise and a survivor in a situation like that. I might say children handled it better than adults at the time. For kids, it was more of an adventure for a while. But you had to learn to survive. Then the evacuation process put you in the hands of unwelcoming foster parents all around the country, so you learned how to manipulate adults, how to lie, how to cheat, how to steal, within certain boundaries. By stealing, I mean things like scrumping, which was pinching apples from the orchards then hiding them in the toilet cistern so you always had something to eat when you needed.''
He was about 6 at the time and often went hungry, he said.
Pinter's is the language of everyday, with repetition and unfinished thoughts, and the play is as much about miscommunication as anything.
The three characters don't listen to each other or understand each other, Macgregor says.
It's also about manipulation and power and ambiguity, and a person sitting in seat 36 may come away with something quite different from the person in seat 37, but hopefully people will go away with lots of questions and talk about it, she said.
''They might go `that was great but what was it about?' They might go 'I have to come back and see this again so I can figure out what it really is about'. I hope they do that.
''I hope they have a laugh and are a bit afraid at the same time, because they are not sure what they are laughing at or why, and is that laughter going to turn into a scream at any moment. Just the unknowing, the lack of certainty, and I hope that unsettles the viewer,'' she says.
