EC: The Caretaker seems to have multiple themes, including alienation, power, human relations, deception, loneliness, and isolation. What do you think the major themes are?
JG: Loneliness. We are in a time when a record number of men live alone and experience isolation because there’s a lack of connection to others, given the economic, social, and political issues we’re experiencing. That's what drew me to this play.
EC: You also think that much of what Harold Pinter is dealing with in The Caretaker relates to a post-war generation of men who were traumatized by World War II.
JG: Yes, particularly in the 60s when they were trying to understand the emerging and socially constructed context for men. You have an established generation of men returned from war who have closed themselves off emotionally, and an emerging generation who suffered challenging childhoods and now seek to reject socially constructed expectations so that they can connect on a human level.
EC: The three characters in the play, which you call a comic tragedy, illuminate many of the issues and challenges that men like that experienced. Talk about the characters and how they interact with each other.
JG: There are two brothers in the play, Aston and Mick. The other character is Davies, who is older than the brothers and, at the outset, a stranger to them. He can be unpleasant and seems to have an incipient streak of violence. Aston is quiet and disconnected partly because he’s been living alone for some time and he wants to connect with others. Mick, who owns the apartment but doesn’t live there, has a fantasy of what he would like the apartment to look like. Aston welcomes Davis into his home without hesitation, while Mick treats the newcomer with extreme suspicion.
EC: The plot of the play is simple, but what takes place in the apartment is thought-provoking in terms of relationships, communication, and self-awareness.
JG: Yes, that’s true. Aston has brought Davies, a guy he’s just met, to the flat because he has nowhere to stay. Mick arrives at the flat and discovers that Aston has brought Davies into the apartment. He reacts with suspicion and displeasure and seems to be controlling as he asks a lot of questions about what’s going on. As the play progresses, Davies appears to become a pawn in a game being played by the two brothers, though the object of the game is never made clear.
EC: How does the dialogue reveal and move the story along?
JG: Critics often say that Pinter’s language is repetitive and at times nonsensical. But to me, the dialogue is minimal, natural and understandable. The characters speak more naturally than they do in other plays. These are men who are dealing with mental health issues and other challenges, so the dialogue Pinter uses helps the audience understand them better through their often-clipped dialogue and long, tangent-filled monologues.
EC: Some critics have called the play a part of the genre known as Absurdist drama. Do you agree?
JG: No, I don’t. These are real men in a real setting, not bizarre characters in trash cans – like Beckett's Endgame, for example. But nothing happens in the play that couldn’t really happen, so it’s not absurdist. It’s related to Pinter’s realist view of life and lives – a speciality that made him develop his own genre, for which he is known.
EC: Let’s consider Pinter as a playwright. He wrote 29 plays and won a Nobel Prize for his work.
JG: Yes, and he was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a career that spanned 50 years. Dialogue is very important in his plays and has been considered the key to his originality. His characters speak colloquially and in a disjointed way that allows for resonant silences. His technique allows audiences to eavesdrop on mundane conversations that derive from power struggles between three lost souls.
EC: You discovered Pinter when you were very young. How did that happen?
JG: I first started reading Pinter as a teenager and found his style to be right up my alley. I enjoy his use of tension and dark humor. My appreciation deepened when I had a chance to act in his play The Dumb Waiter some years ago. Geof Dolman, who plays Davies, and I first read this script together in early 2020, and we have been hoping to perform together since then.
EC: You are both a director and an actor, and you’re in this play. What is that like?
JG: Doing both jobs simultaneously is challenging, to be sure, and not often a best practice. I certainly wouldn’t direct myself in a lead role! But in this case, I’m playing Mick, who has far less stage time than the other two characters. I find acting alongside my actors is my most effective way of directing them. This comes from my career directing primarily children and amateurs. It’s leading by example. I could spend ages talking to actors about what style I’d like them to adopt and ask them to make lots of choices, or I can just jump up on stage with them, show them the style, and make choices of my own for them to consider.
EC: This is a play about the push-pull of compassion and contempt and the end is heartbreaking. What do you hope the audience will leave with having seen the play?
JG: This is an intergenerational play that includes tensions as well as small gestures of kindness, so I hope people will have empathy for people from different classes and experiences, so they can realize their worth in terms of their economic contributions and social status. I think Pinter wanted audiences to consider the human condition and to consider how our different environments shape our identity and relationships.