Discuss the Caretaker as "A Comedy of Menace".
The initial review of Harold Pinter's The Caretaker generally followed a pattern: the brilliance of the actors was celebrated and the questions of influence, primarily Beckett's, were linked to discussions of the relationship between the comic and serious elements in the play. Interpretations of the 'meaning' varied from the literal to the fully allegorical, by way of generalized abstract tags. Subsequent academic criticism, deriving from textual study rather than stage performance, has early always followed the serio-tragical-symbolical-abstract line- what we might call Modern Man in Search of His Insurance Cards, or, I stink. Therefore I am. The comedy of The Caretaker is not a dispensable palliative. To discuss 'meaning without taking this into account is to distort the play as a whole and devalue its achievement. The combination of the comic and the serious, laughter and silence, is often deeply disturbing for art audience: but only in confronting it can we begin to understand the play.
For one member of the audience, at least, the relationship between the comic and the serious elements was unacceptable. Leonard Russell, the Sunday Times book reviewer, recorded his impressions of a performance at the Duchess Theatre in an open letter to Harold Pinter:
I will go so far as to admit that I found it a strangely menacing and disturbing evening. It was also a highly puzzling evening; and here I refer not to the play but to the behaviour of the audience. On the evening I was present a large majority had no doubt at all that your special contribution to the theatre is to take a heartbreaking themes and treat it facially. Gales of happy, persistent, and, it seemed to me, totally indiscriminate laughter greeted a play which I lake to be, for all its funny moments, a tragic reading of life. May, I ask this question—are you yourself happy with the atmosphere of rollicking good fun?
Pinter's reply is such crucial importance for an understanding of the play:
Your question
For one member of the audience, at least, the relationship between the comic and the serious elements was unacceptable. Leonard Russell, the Sunday Times book reviewer, recorded his impressions of a performance at the Duchess Theatre in an open letter to Harold Pinter:
I will go so far as to admit that I found it a strangely menacing and disturbing evening. It was also a highly puzzling evening; and here I refer not to the play but to the behaviour of the audience. On the evening I was present a large majority had no doubt at all that your special contribution to the theatre is to take a heartbreaking themes and treat it facially. Gales of happy, persistent, and, it seemed to me, totally indiscriminate laughter greeted a play which I lake to be, for all its funny moments, a tragic reading of life. May, I ask this question—are you yourself happy with the atmosphere of rollicking good fun?
Pinter's reply is such crucial importance for an understanding of the play:
Your question
Bibliography: http://plays.about.com/od/playwrights/a/pinter.htm http://neoenglishsystem.blogspot.com/2010/11/discuss-caretaker-as-comedy-of-menace.html