Performing Pinter is a ‘black-belt’ challenge

By IRINA DUNN

In the Ensemble’s production of Harold Pinter’s “The Caretaker”, Henry Nixon (Foxtel’s The Kettering Incident, TV’s The Secrets She Keeps) plays Mick, whose brother Aston invites Davies, a tramp, home to his flat.

Pinter’s biographer Michael Billington says Pinter described Mick as “the most purely invented character” of the three.

I asked Nixon what kind of character Pinter was trying to portray in Mick.

“He is an aspirational sort of ‘lad about town’, I suppose. Mick is damaged, certainly. Brutish, violent and ill-tempered at times, but clever, mischievous and quick-witted as well. He has dreams but one gets the feeling they will never be fulfilled because the way he imagines himself is not the way the world sees him. He has a nobility about him too: he never truly abandons his brother.”

What did Nixon enjoy about playing the character of Mick?

“The dynamic shifts. The deep work. The amazing speeches that have taken months to get down, the intensity of it, the challenge of it,” he said. “It requires black-belt acting and a sort of assuredness as an actor that doing TV and film doesn’t. The rigour.”

What is Nixon’s view of Pinter?

“I think he is obtuse, absurd, funny, sad, full of anguish, full of hope, unsentimental, ludicrous, awesome and impressive and if I saw him I would give him a big hug but he is dead.”

I asked Nixon about Iain Sinclair’s direction of the play.

“Iain is a terrific director, the more we delved into this play under his guidance the more it opened out, like all extraordinary pieces of literature do. It is as epic, intriguing and political as the entire series of Game of Thrones and it all takes place in one room.”

The Caretaker plays until November 19

Ensemble Theatre, 78 McDougall St, Kirribilli

www.ensemble.com.au/shows/the-caretaker/