"The Caretaker" (2003), New York City. (Official Site).

Starring Patrick Stewart, Kyle MacLachlan, Aidan Gillen.

"It is difficult to imagine any other young actor playing Mick as beautifully as Gillen does. Reminiscent of the young Gary Oldman, he is almost embarrassingly intense. He gives everything and more, and it's impossible to look away. Toward the end of the play, when Davies dons a velvet smoking jacket, we see Mick lying at his feet like a boy listening to a bedtime story; he's both lethal and adorable, a cuddly gutter rat. ...[I]t's Gillen who brings his own imagination to bear on the show. [He] hit us with the full blast of his character's menace, wit, and madness. In doing so, he opened our ears, our eyes, our hearts, without compromise." – The New Yorker

"...Gillen has the necessary chops. Lean and quick and with a glint in his eye that comes and goes, he moves like a nervous cat. When, in Act I, he knocks Stewart about and then stands threateningly over him, The Caretaker reaches the level of fright that's called for. The foreboding recurs whenever Gillen is around, challenging an audience to guess what he'll do next and fooling observers with every sudden gesture." – TheaterMania

"Gillen is nasty and amusing as Mick.... This is one of Pinter's unpredictable working-class terrors and Gillen, an English actor new to Manhattan, obviously understands the slinky violence under the pale skin. He keeps his upper body still and stalks with his legs, a presence that suggests the emotional contradictions of an Irish folk dancer." – New York Newsday

"...perhaps best of all—it's the showiest role—is Gillen as Mick, mysterious businessman and archetypal Cockney wiseguy." – New York Post

"Interestingly, the character that seems the freshest is the nasty younger brother, perhaps because his whimsicality (inviting the homeless man to come to his place to 'listen to some Tchaikovsky') seems weirder, more surreal, more unfathomable. Aiden [sic] Gillen plays him with great flair." – New York Daily News

"Gillen makes a jaunty Mick, although he seems to have blown in from a breezier sort of piece." – Newark Star-Ledger

"Where play and performance come together most successfully is in the work of Gillen.... Gillen has a sneering baby face, just right for Mick, the jittery, almost sadistic younger brother. The actor gives a tough yet funny performance as a vaguely psychotic punk who takes delight in tormenting Stewart's character—while thinking up ways to redecorate the dreary lodgings. What's more, Gillen jolts the play and the audience back to the uneasiness that should permeate the production." – Associated Press

"Even before he stirs an eyelid, this unidentified figure in a black leather jacket—played by Aidan Gillen, in a smashing Broadway debut—emanates the subliminal hum of an electric generator. With his long, pale face frozen in enigmatic reverie, it seems equally possible that he's thinking about a long-ago afternoon with a lovely girl or the best way of disposing of an inconvenient body.
...Gillen is fluent in the language of ambiguity that is the currency of Pinterland. His presence is at once sharp and shifting, his tight little smile an uncertain balance of cruel and kindly intentions....
With his teddy-boy swagger and cheaply perfumed language, Mick (a role originated by Alan Bates) has always been the flashiest part as well as the smallest. Mr. Gillen runs with it, leading with his pelvis and cocked chin, but he is never merely a slick thug. When this Mick goes into his salesman's spiel, talking about real estate or interior decorating, he begins cynically and concludes sentimentally, as if hypnotized by his own language.
This fellow has a vulnerable underbelly, as all Pinter characters do, that's a target for predators. But because Mr. Gillen is the only cast member who conveys Pinteresque confusion with conviction and precision, Mick never loses the upper hand." – New York Times