In a cluttered bedroom, a sad-looking man named Aston (Daniel Beecher) invites an old, homeless man named Davies (Joe Cronin) to stay with him until he can fix himself up. In conversations punctuated by unworldly string music and a leaky roof, Aston offers to pay Davies a bit to be caretaker of the place. But, we soon learn, Aston's younger brother Mick (Matthew Ivan Bennett) is the real owner of the house, which calls into question who Davies' employer actually is.

If you are tone-deaf to interpersonal relations -- maybe you had some brain work done some years back? -- and can't see past the disingenuous fronts of people, then this is all you will see in Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter's play "The Caretaker." I mean, really, that's it, the end. Then you'll shuffle away, head hung, to the next task of your day.

If you are the kind of paranoid who sees clearly the sinister machinations behind every friend's intention, you'll instead experience dense prose dripping with subtext. You'll meet an unkempt, unwashed old gentleman who calls immigrants dirty and is stuck in the state of "can't get a decent break," no matter how many bones are thrown to him. You'll find that metaphor disturbingly apt, as he exhibits a painful readiness to be treated like a dog, ingratiating himself to whoever abuses him the most and biting the hand that feeds him. Then you'll walk away wondering whether everyone who offers you his hand is secretly striving to pilfer your sovereignty and status.

There is a Sartrean, "Hell is other people" feel to "The Caretaker." Throw in the anxious complacency and absurdism of "Waiting for Godot." (While you're at it, note the explicit absence of mirrors and clocks.) Pinter's characters beg to be limited -- by each other, by the weather, by the world -- so that they can exculpate themselves of responsibility for their failures.

The three have a common monomania that keeps them from getting past the next item on their to-do list. Each picks an obsession to busy himself, so as not to be scared of whatever role is next in life. The self-absorbed, litany-like repetition of their sapped aspirations sounds like a hypnotic refrain, interwoven through the script.

All three characters could have been portrayed as caricatures; instead, their respective actors fill out their roles with energy and poignancy. Bennett, whom some will recognize as the resident playwright of Plan-B Theatre Company, is the least fitted to his role yet adds the most charismatic presence and ably counterbalances his two foils.

To watch the onstage repartee is to watch power and respect superficially changing hands. Fear makes people nasty -- especially fear of the future. Doing someone a favor may lift us up in his eyes -- or mark us as inferior and deferent. Same with other cues: asking or proffering advice, waving a knife, forcing others to choose sides, condemning their combativeness once they do.

It's tragic to watch people continually pop the balloons of their own ambitions. It's more so to watch them keep each other down by trying to maintain the upper hand. No one wins this game. The power play drifts off without a solid conclusion -- but with a stark, powerful impression.