THE CARETAKER
The production isn’t bad. The acting choices, for the most part, are appropriate if uninspired, and one cast member, Rich Komenich, looks as if he’s capable of occasional brilliance. Mercedes Rudkin’s direction, while solid and decisive, is the theatrical equivalent of sensible shoes–but that’s certainly preferable to the excesses practiced by other new groups hoping to garner some quick notoriety.
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So the Company Players are yet another small group worth keeping an eye on. Given the group’s track record, they’ll be around for a while–their most conspicuous virtue seems to be tenacity. The Company Players operated for years out of a cramped storefront in an area of Gary, Indiana, so dangerous that the audience had to be locked in for safety, while staging such difficult works as The Homecoming and The Birthday Party by Pinter and Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? After a move to the old Lake County courthouse in Crown Point, they did Long Day’s Journey Into Night and other heavy works.
The Company Players’ production makes the tensions within the play palpable, while squeezing out the suspense and the humor embedded in Pinter’s script. The richness and complexity of the play offer infinite choices, and the three actors have made some good ones. Larry Manion, one of the original members of the group, plays Aston as kind and intelligent, but also visibly damaged by the electroshock therapy he received in the mental hospital. Bruce Manion, Larry’s brother, softens Mick’s hard edge with a sense of irony and cynicism, making his character both menacing and funny.
