The Caretaker at Maidment Studio

By PETER CALDER

The headline-writers of the 60s dubbed Harold Pinter "the merchant of menace" for his strikingly original dialogue, repetitive and disjointed, too close to perfect vernacular to be real, and keenly attuned to the eloquence of silence.

It was a linguistic ballet - remarkably to modern ears, it is quite devoid of profanity - that felt like a psychological dance of death and in this, his first commercial success, it had the force of revelation.

The interaction between its three characters - the swaggering Mick, his damaged brother Aston and the tramp, Davies, whom Aston brings back to the one-room flat where all the action occurs - is at once universal and uniquely British, and this cast, who all manage the accents effortlessly and unobtrusively, give it top-shelf treatment.

Designer Jennifer Walling's idea of grot is a little too neat and tidy but the most of the play's clutter and mess is internal, anyway.

Edward Newborn, who picked up the role of Davies when Norman Forsey's indisposition forced the production's rescheduling, makes the tramp into a truculent scrappy bantam of a man, as fast on his feet as he is sneaky in his manipulations, seeking to play one brother off against the other.

Michael Lawrence's Mick is rather one-note, though it's a thankless part, the piece's least interesting. But the serendipitously named David Aston, who plays the weaker brother, gives the show's standout performance.

From the moment he appears, his Aston is a character we hunger to know. For all the text's mysteries, we sense that with Mick and Davies what we see is what we get; with Aston there is always more.

His walk, his inflection and phrasing, in particular his command of short silences, gives his character a containment which is attractive and deeply sad and the long speech in which he explains the source of his malaise is a piece of individual magic.

In the end, it's a play about frustrated dreams and the way we lie to each other and ourselves. It may feel a little dated, but it's a polished reading of a classic and deserves excellent houses.