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Synopsis When will the target appear? An Ormitha what? Who is Wilson? Gus and Ben wait for their ‘hit’ in a basement with idiosyncratic plumbing, a Dumb Waiter with increasingly bizarre requests, and not even a cup of tea! This darkly funny play charts the tension between Gus and Ben towards the surprising conclusion.
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.
Michael Coveney on Whatsonstage.com (3 stars) – “After the debacle of Pinter's People at the Haymarket, it is something of a relief to have an instant reminder of the playwright’s distinction in this beautifully weighted and acted revival of one of his best early short plays. Even with reduced ticket prices, though, it makes for a slender evening of just one hour’s playing time…. Lee Evans has already proved his brilliance as a clown actor in Beckett’s Endgame. He starts here on quite a high-pitched tone, but manages astonishing gradations within it. He makes of tying his bootlaces a mime of hypnotic comedy, his defence of his own sad sack status (‘I’ve got interests’) a curiously sweet and endearing confession of inadequacy. Isaacs bats away his flickering complaints with a sternness that simultaneously hints at his own vulnerability…. It is all in the detail, and Harry Burton’s meticulously paced production does not miss a trick. Peter McKintosh’s design is grubbily spot on.”
Michael Billington in the Guardian (5 stars) - “This is the real McCoy. After the grisly cock-up of Pinter's People, it is bracing to encounter Harry Burton's superbly orchestrated revival of this 1957 hour-long piece… two crucial design decisions reinforce the play's political overtones. Peter McKintosh's basement is the dingiest I've ever seen, suggesting these two killers are on the lowest ladder of the "organisation". And the dumb waiter is no mere comic device, but a lift that descends from a vast height with the resonance of a guillotine. When it falls for the last time, we know a murder is about to take place…. Evans has the prickliness of a man who senses something is amiss…. Evans has created a real character. The same applies to Jason Isaacs' Ben…. That is what makes this such a fine revival. It reminds us that Pinter knows exactly how to balance comedy and fear to imply that we are all in the grip of invisible, higher powers.”
Nicholas de Jongh in the Evening Standard (5 stars) - “How pleasing to discover this 1957 one-acter, a black comedy of suspense and menace, dove-tailed with a cat-and-mouse thriller in which the mouse never realises he is being hunted, has lost none of its potency. The play's abiding strangeness and capacity to induce mystified laughter lingers on, thanks to Harry Burton's beautifully nuanced production and even more to a mesmerising, definitive performance by Lee Evans in which comedy and pathos are entwined…. The suspense comes in disturbing flurries, entwined with absurdist comedy. A letter containing 12 matches is thrust under the door; a brandished revolver sparks the realisation the men are hired killers waiting their victim's arrival… A palpable sense of foreboding rises as they rehearse their familiar, murderous moves. The catastrophe comes hurtling out of the blue. Full price tickets for 60 minutes is a bit steep, but wow - what a vintage theatrical hour it is!”
Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph - “You get a real bang for your bucks here, with a wonderfully lean, darkly comic and suspenseful script and cracking performances from that most versatile of comedians, Lee Evans, paired with Jason Isaacs… Pinter wrote The Dumb Waiter at the start of his career as a dramatist back in 1957, yet almost everything that makes his best work distinctive is already in place, not least the sense of edgy unease and the spare precision of his language, which turns the most banal exchanges into often blackly comic stage poetry…. the play itself still feels startlingly fresh and sharp, not least in the chilling ingenuity of its final twist…. Evans manages to be funny, contemptible and terrified all at the same time… Isaacs provides the perfect foil as the taciturn Ben…. The Dumb Waiter may be short, but there is no mistaking its status as a groundbreaking modern classic.”
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.”
After the debacle of Pinter's People at the Haymarket, it is something of a relief to have an instant reminder of the playwright’s distinction in this beautifully weighted and acted revival of one of his best early short plays. Even with reduced ticket prices, though, it makes for a slender evening of just one hour’s playing time.
Ben (Jason Isaacs) and Gus (Lee Evans) are two small-time contract killers awaiting instructions in the grimy basement of an abandoned building in Birmingham. Their beds are jammed up against the wall. An apparently disused dumb waiter – the conveyor of food orders to an upper level – suddenly springs into action, rushing up and down with a sinister thunder like an animated guillotine.
Gus is still haunted by the memory of their last job, a messy business. That girl’s body didn’t half spread, didn’t it? He wonders who clears up after them. Ben is biding his time, regurgitating newspaper stories about an old man who tried to cross a busy road by squeezing himself (fatally) underneath a lorry, or a child who killed a cat.
Life is cheap, nasty and brutal. But who is giving the orders? How on earth are Gus and Ben to respond to requests for braised steak and sago pudding, or liver and onions and jam tart? They decide they had better send something up, so the panicky Gus loads the tray with crisps, milk and an Eccles cake. He seems to take the instructions literally, whereas the more taciturn, authoritative Ben may be dealing with coded orders. The final instruction will destroy their double act.
For that is the heart of a piece that obviously relates to Samuel Beckett’s tramps waiting for Godot, or the cross talk patter of music hall comedians. Lee Evans has already proved his brilliance as a clown actor in Beckett’s Endgame. He starts here on quite a high-pitched tone, but manages astonishing gradations within it. He makes of tying his bootlaces a mime of hypnotic comedy, his defence of his own sad sack status (“I’ve got interests”) a curiously sweet and endearing confession of inadequacy.
Isaacs bats away his flickering complaints with a sternness that simultaneously hints at his own vulnerability. These two guys have really landed themselves in something, and they are in it up to their necks. The tensions bubble in the chat about whether you “light the kettle” or “put the kettle on,” and whether or not Aston Villa might be playing away.
It is all in the detail, and Harry Burton’s meticulously paced production does not miss a trick. Peter McKintosh’s design is grubbily spot on. One just wishes that Isaacs and Lee had spread their wings a bit further and included more value-for-money Pinter material, as Jason Watkins and Toby Jones did in a superb Oxford Playhouse Pinter bill (this play and three sketches) three years ago. For a start, they might have shown the Haymarket gang how to play the taxicab sketch Victoria Station, an ideal companion piece.
I saw a fine production of this play in Edinburgh last year and was very much looking forward to comparing the two. It transpired that this latest version was markedly different to the earlier one (although certainly not in terms of quality, for it was excellent).
Perhaps the most noticeable difference was that the humour in the play was emphasised to a significantly greater extent – so much so, in fact, that part-way through I was wondering whether, because the piece was being played so much for its comedy value, it would ultimately generate the same degree of tension and menace that had arisen in the other production (particularly since I now knew the plot). Remarkably, however, and although the emphasis on the comedy was retained more or less throughout, by the end I was literally on the edge of my seat as I anticipated the play's final moments.
This is surely a tribute to the play itself as well as to the superb performances of both Lee Evans and Jason Isaacs, who played the two hit men and whose characterisations were also rather different to those I had seen before. Lee Evans brought both pathos and pugnacity to the part of Gus, whilst Jason Isaac's Ben became more of a control freak the longer the play went on, his anger and anxiety exacerbated by the fact that he apparently had no more idea about the meaning of the events involving the dumb waiter than his colleague.
Set amidst a realistically dingy basement (designed by Peter McKintosh) with tiles that were falling off the walls and lino that was crumbling away, the device of the dumb waiter itself was very effectively used on this occasion. Designed in such a way that we could actually see it descending its shaft each time it travelled down to the stage and making a chilling, guillotine-like noise (sound by Matt McKenzie) which started with a low rumble that increased in speed and volume as the device neared the bottom of the shaft, culminating in a loud thud, its periodic arrivals considerably added to the threatening atmosphere that was gradually built up during the show. So realistic was the guillotine-like effect, in fact, that whenever one of the hit men peered up the shaft, we were in momentary alarm lest the device suddenly descend onto his head.
The Dumb Waiter is a wonderful play and it would be hard to find a production of it that was much better than this. No matter how many other versions you may have seen, I strongly urge you to catch this show if you can.
- Janet Polson
28 Feb 07
I thought Lee Evans' acting was a little over the top, but it's a good production of an accessible Pinter. A bit of a rip-off at these prices for 55 mins, though. - Gareth James
23 Feb 07
Oddly this was my first exposure to Pinter, possibly put off by the intellectual pretension that sometimes seems to accompany Pinter, Becket and Stoppard. The Dumb Waiter seemed like an ideal introduction as a one-hour black comedy (long enough in the disgracefully uncomfortable Trafalgar Studio 1). Although the basic premise now seems cliched it is worth remembering that this piece was first performed 50 years ago. As each bizarre message is delivered via the dumb waiter the psychological tension increases for and between the two asassins, superbly played by Lee Evans and Jason Isaacs. Although the ending was predictable one question remains unanswered: what happened to Gus and why did he come back through the "wrong" door? A very rewarding experience but I'm not quite sure if I'll be rushing for tickets for The Caretaker at The Tricycle. David Baxter (14.2.07) - David Baxter
Opened 29 Sep 1930, on site of the Old Ship Tavern. Famous for the Whitehall Farces (Brian Rix) which started in 1950. 608 seats. Member of the Society of London Theatre. An [ATG] member. Closed after the run of Abigail's Party July 12th 2003. The 377 seat Trafalgar Studio opens early 2004. A further 100 seat studio space in the pipeline. Renamed from the Whitehall to Trafalgar Studios.
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