" Jonathan Pryce At Liverpool Everyman"

This is a picture hanging in the foyer of Liverpool's Everyman Theatre.
This year the Theatre celebrates its 45th Birthday and the photo features many actors who were there at the beginning. Stare into these faces. You'll recognise many.

Jonathan Pryce ( fresh from RADA) joined Everyman Company in 1972. And I've long been interested in his career . I knew him years back, when he was John Price from Holywell in Wales...a tall, dark student in Liverpool......when even then, he'd revealed the charisma the world of theatre now knows so well.

Yesterday I visited The Everyman and saw Pryce as Davies the tramp in Harold Pinter's " The Caretaker".

And Pryce (in 1980, he played Mick to Kenneth Cranham's Aston and Warren Mitchell's Davies with the National Theatre) made the part of Davies his very own.

Pryce's Davies was old and Welsh. And he was many other things too...... Pryce's Davies was sly but gentle, witty but sad, forthright but complex....he was resigned and grateful, fiercely angry..... And Pryce's Davies was both bewildered AND bewildering.

Pinter ( before he died last Christmas) knew this production was planned. He'd hoped to see it. Had he done so, he'd have seen how very much this Liverpool audience celebrated Jonathan Pryce's return to his roots... but also how they thrilled to a superb production of one of the most important plays in British theatre.

"The Caretaker" runs at L'pool EverymanTheatre until Saturday October 31st. See http://www.everymanplayhouse.com/

And P.S: Blog was 3 years old on Oct 1st. Time's flown.