The Caretaker (1960)

In an entry on Pinter for the 1969 edition of The Encyclopedia of World Drama cited by Merritt, Wardle
repeats and updates some of his first perspective on comedy of menace as he had applied it initially to
Pinter's writing:

Early in his writing career Pinter admitted to three influences: Franz Kafka, American gangster films, and
Samuel Beckett. . . . At that time his plays, more than those of any other plawright's [sic], were
responsible for the newly coined term 'comedy of menace.' This phrase certainly makes sense when
applied to The Birthday Party . . . or to The Dumb Waiter. . . . But 'menace' is hardly the word for The
Caretaker, and still less for subsequent plays in which Pinter increasingly exchanged his derelict settings
and down-and-out characters for environments of moneyed elegance (657–58). (Qtd. in Merritt 240)

Despite those more-recent caveats regarding applying the phrase that he himself initially coined for
Pinter's writing to The Caretaker—only the second of Pinter's full-length plays produced by then and the
one that launched his career as a successful playwright in 1960 (Merritt 9, 226) —and to Pinter's later
plays, scenes in both acts of The Caretaker in which Mick confronts an unsuspecting Davies and scares
him almost speechless (Pinter, The Caretaker 129, 146) also epitomise how comedy and menace still co-
exist in Pinter's text and on Pinter's stage.

The comic aspects of this play multiply, reaching a crescendo in Mick's monologue in Act Two describing
his "deepest wishes" for decorating the attic room (161, 173) and falling with Davies, a tramp taken in
out of the cold by his brother, suggesting that "if" he can "just get down to Sidcup" to get his "papers"
and "sort" himself "out" (113–16, 164), his refrain and excuse for everything (153, 175–79), he might
just be able to accomplish Mick's hyperbolic pipe dream and "decorate the attic room out for [Mick]"
(164), leading Mick to accuse Davies of misrepresenting himself as "an experienced first-class
professional interior and exterior decorator" (172–74), an absurd conclusion, given the tangible
evidence of the down-and-out Davies before Mick (and the audience).

Pinter's friend the late film and stage director David Jones, who directed the play for the Roundabout
Theatre, in New York City, in 2003 (having previously directed Pinter's 1983 film of Betrayal, as well as
other works by or featuring him), reminds his audience that Pinter himself said, in a widely quoted
statement, that The Caretaker is only "funny, up to a point" and that "beyond that point" is why he
wrote it:

There is always mischief lurking in the darkest corners. The world of The Caretaker is a bleak one, its
characters damaged and lonely. But they are all going to survive. And in their dance to that end they
show a frenetic vitality and a wry sense of the ridiculous that balance heartache and laughter. Funny,
but not too funny. As Pinter wrote, back in 1960: "As far as I am concerned The Caretaker IS funny, up to
a point. Beyond that point, it ceases to be funny, and it is because of that point that I wrote it." (Jones)

"Beyond the point" of the comedy (the "funny") lies the scary territory that threatens one's very
existence (Billington 92), which Wardle and others commonly have "labeled" or "pigeonholed"
(depending on one's perspective) as "menace" (Merritt 9–10).