How did you become an actor?

I went to a secondary school in York, and we never did any acting or drama.   The only time we went on stage was for a St. Patrick’s concert once a year!  After I left school, I joined a club called the York Boy’s Club.  There wasn’t much to do in the evening, or much to look at either back then: Darts, Ping pong and Dandelion and Burdock, it was a bit boring.  One day they were doing Drama down stairs and I had to take a cup of tea down for the Drama teacher and I got roped in.  I really liked it, it was a bit of Shakespeare and I didn’t know what it meant, but I really liked saying the words.  I was in a few productions there and then I joined another youth group, called The Roundtree Youth Club, and there we did musicals.  We did a Black and White minstrel show, terribly un-PC now, we also did West Side story in which we I did my Bernardo!  Then I joined one or two other groups as well.

Who have you been inspired by?

Well I love people who make me laugh, Peter Cook and Spike Milligan, and Max Wall and all those.  But with regards to legitimate acting, It’s probably when I went to see Richard III staring Laurence Olivier; that is when I fist got turned onto Shakespeare.  There was this man on screen, talking to me, talking out to me and I found him frightening and quite funny and I thought he was brilliant.  Luckily I went onto work with him at the National in 1972, and I was in his company for two years. He was always an inspiration.

How did you get your role in The Caretaker?

TheCaretaker was a play that I’d read, but never seen.  I read it in the sixties when I was at Drama school; I used to read plays then, but I don’t really do it any more, unless, I’m being offered something, or I’m up for something.  When I first read TheCaretaker, I though ‘ooh I’d love to play Mick’, or ‘I’d love to play Aston’, but somehow they passed me by and I’m the right age for the part of Davies I suppose, and they asked me to do it.  

Davies is a part that has been on the back burner for quite a few years, every time it has come up in the West End: Gambon, Warren  Mitchell or Donald Pleasance.  I used to read all these reviews in magazines and see pictures of plays and TheCaretaker was one that struck me at the time.  Now it’s finally come round and it’s my turn.

How has your interpretation of your character developed over the rehearsal period?

When I first read TheCaretaker, I didn’t realise how funny it was, then I read it again and I felt that there was great humour in it.  Then, gradually I suppose I became aware of the darker side of the play.  I have become more and more aware of the desperate side of Davies.  His motivation or his drive has come from the basic instinct of survival: of keeping out of the crap weather, keeping in doors, just keeping his warmth and just a bit of comfort.  Davies has been on the road for most of his life it seems and this is his last opportunity or he feels it is, of finding a safe haven, which all through the play he is desperate to hang on to it and he will use any devious means to achieve that.  I suppose I have become aware through the rehearsal process of all the different means that Davies has of achieving that.

Davies is not aware of the relationship between the two brothers, he is not aware of that bond between them and totally underestimates both of them.  That is Davies’ fatal flaw.   He has got an instinct for survival and keeping on the road, and you have to admire his tenacity in a way, but his insight and awareness of human psychology is practically zero.  He doesn’t catch what is going on in the house and between the brothers and that’s his downfall. 

Those are the things I’ve probably been aware of as we have developed the play, and how the play kind of darkens and the humour gets more and more desperate.

Davies tells a lot of stories about his past, about his short marriage, about under garments in vegetable pans, about the Luton monastery and the Forces.  Do you think Davies stories are true, or to what extent do you think there are elements of truth in them?

I think there is an element of truth in what Davies is saying; I think he did leave his wife and go out sort of on the run.  He must have changed his name, however many times we don’t know, but I suspect that he has had one or two more than he mentions in the text.

When Davies says that it is hard to set his mind back, when he is asked direct questions about where he was born, where he comes from, there is a lot of stuff that he is desperate not to give away because it puts him in a vulnerable position and he is very, very guarded.  I also think that a lot of Davies past is probably clouded. 

Another thing that I have been aware of (actually it was Con (Actor playing Aston) who suggested it) is that maybe Davies has been in rehab at some point.  So when Davies talks about the institutions like Aston has been in he does so with some knowledge.  I suspect Davies has been sectioned at some point for maybe his drinking and that’s the bulk of his kind of vagueness about his past, there has been a lost weekend that has just happened to last a few years at some point and a lot of it he doesn’t actually remember.

Do you think that Davies is the catalyst for the action that happens on stage?

He is in the sense that the brothers communicate with each other through Davies, even though he is the most unlikely candidate.  Their odd way of relating to him, is a way of relating to each other.  Mick wants to find out about his brother, but even though the brother’s seem to have a deep love for each other, they can only communicate to each other through Davies.  

The ambiguity of the play in who is the manipulator and the manipulated, who is the aggressor and who is the victim, and I think the audience has some time to work out all of that.  Davies thinks that he is manipulating Aston, but he is being manipulated by Mick.  

Pinter does not state anything, he doesn’t tell the audience how things are, he lets out them find it out what is going on between these people.  Pinter doesn’t make it easy for the audience in that sense, because we have all got a duality in our nature and that duality is in all the characters as well.  They are all fantasists in a way, and they are all lost in their own different way.  I don’t think Davies has any scruples, and it’s quite liberating to play some one who has no scruples –
alarmingly liberating.