Review: (Ottawa) The Dumb Waiter

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.

Review: (Toronto) The Dumb Waiter

l-r Mark Wilson, David Matheson (photo: Dahlia Katz)

Giving Good Pause
by Jason Booker

The Dumb Waiter. Pinter, eh? 

Pauses.

Great production by Wordsmyth Theatre here, an independent Toronto company. See, sharp direction by Melee Hutton leads David Matheson and Mark Wilson to superb performances. These two, they play Gus and Ben as harsh, hardened, yet vulnerable. Two agitated hit men received a call but now, stuck in the basement, waiting for the word go. Then they begin getting notes from the dumb waiter – you know the device in the wall of old-fashioned hoity-toity estates, delivers dishes of grub and that sort of thing. And good for a café, which is maybe what is upstairs of the basement, so says Ben, when they begin sending up their snacks. But just the sound of that dumb waiter rattling into life, well, it gives you the heebie jeebies.  And that’s without mentioning the ever-present guns these two whip about.

Anyway, Andrea Mittler’s set captures grimness, er, griminess.  Like who has washed the walls in this place in the last decade? Grey and brown: my favourites. Dark, dirty and immersive – no one can tell what part of this space is the set and what part is her design. A set built on contrasts between Ben’s crisply white bed and Gus’ rumpled pong-y sheets.

Review: (Toronto) The Dumb Waiter

Dis-Pinterest
Serving up a classic with a side of confusion
by Gregory Bunker

In The Dumb Waiter, Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter creates a suspenseful, one-act play centred on two hit men discussing the mysterious nature of their next job. Completely character-driven, the script carefully ratchets up the tension with each line to its eventually obvious but still unbearable conclusion. This tension was sadly missing in the Two Wolves production, replaced instead by general confusion.