Tense Rumblings
by Jim Murchison
When you walk into the theatre and sit down you notice that there are two rather uncomfortable looking single beds at right angles from each other. The walls are draped with spattered sheets as if the place is preparing for some kind of renovation. Hidden somewhere under the draped cotton is a dumb waiter, used to transport what to where we don't know.
The Avalon is a very intimate space and so fits the intimate and tense style of Harold Pinter's The Dumb Waiter. Third Wall Theatre presents this play a little differently in that they have two women playing the roles of Gus and Ben. I don't really think it matters. It certainly doesn't hurt it. The star of Pinter is Pinter's words and the spaces between them so the most important thing is to cast people that do the text justice. Mary Ellis and Kristina Watt are such people and director Todd Duckworth understands stage dynamics and the value of a pause and a word so the production is played in the right key and well worth seeing.
