THE DUMB WAITER

It takes a play of genius not to age a jot in sixty plus years. Happily Pinter’s ‘The Dumb Waiter’ first seen in 1960, fits that play bill to a tee. It has all the Pinteresque tropes: deliberately enigmatic plot, menacing language, funny banalities and characters trapped in some kind of living hell. Here gangsters Ben and Gus are stuck in some dark basement waiting for what? A victim? A cuppa? Godot? Pinter’s script, sparse yes but brimming with meaning and symbolism opens one’s mind to many interpretations. Is it a straightforward hit-men drama? A parable on the immutable hierarchies of power? Are we in a cellar or condemned cell? The playwright I feel deliberately let’s our mind try to sort out the entertaining condundrums.

All images; Viv Wang

The two hander stands or falls on the intelligence of the character actors and the fluidity of direction. Here with the college-based company Fletcher Players, we were in very good hands. From Gus’ opening struggle in tying his shoe laces after a terrible daytime sleep to the shocking final reveal (no spoilers here), I was totally gripped. Josh Herberg was pitch perfect as the edgily sinister Ben lording it over the Sam Thompson as the nervously irritable Gus. The direction brought out the laughs (of which there were plenty) especially as the spooky dumb waiter starts to send its comically impossible orders from some unseen power sitting several storeys above. There are threats, there are banal newspapers stories and a stale Eccles cake.

The direction by Joseph Wolffe and Kit Bashaarat used the small space of the Corpus to full effect and kept the tension stretched like the strings of a racket. It was a thoroughly gripping and entertaining (short) evening which encouraged me to re-read the play – a play of genius.