The Caretaker

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