Tweet

Review Round-up: Critics Find Waiter Not So Dumb

Lee Evans and Jason Isaacs star in Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, which opened last night (8 February 2007, following previews from 2 February) at Trafalgar Studios, directed by Harry Burton, for a limited run to 24 March 2007 (See News, 2 Jan 2007).

The 1960 play, one of Pinter’s earliest, is set in an airless basement in Birmingham, where two hit men await instructions for their next killing. The men – one strong and silent and the other incessantly talkative - realise they’re not alone when the dumb waiter (the mini-elevator used to transport meals and dirty dishes between floors) starts moving.

Overnight critics delighted in the menace and suspense built up by the play and the strong performances of the actors – particularly Evans – who, they said, bought out plenty of comedy in Burton’s slick production. However some felt that despite the production’s positives, at just over an hour it did not constitute value for money, and several critics said it should have been paired with another piece, or some of Pinter’s sketches to give a full evening’s entertainment.

Rhoda Koenig in the Independent – “Menace hardly figures in this rather lightweight version, in part because of its likeable actors. Peter McKintosh's basement, a room with all the charm of a long-abandoned underground toilet, is actually more oppressive than the mood created by the two, who wait for orders of an unknown kind from an unknown master. Evans makes an exceptionally gormless gunman but his overstated manner - he barks his lines from the beginning and rushes a few - loses much of the character's vulnerability…. the dumb waiter contributes more terror than the two men - perhaps because Pinter's style of evasive, inconsequential chatter is now so familiar that the audience is too ready to laugh to show it gets the nasty joke. The production should become more enjoyable once it relaxes a bit.”

- by Caroline Ansdell

Related Content