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The Dumb Waiter Harold Pinter’s strange little fable from 1957 gets a thoroughly straight production from director Paul Hodgson. Even if he does have a pair of modern comedians to play the two assassins stuck in an anonymous Birmingham basement, waiting for the call that will signal that their latest victim has arrived. Much of The Dumb Waiter’s detail is of its time, as Pinter carefully layers up the minutiae of observation to create a picture of the crepuscular existence these two lead. The gas stove, lighting the kettle, an Eccles cake, even the dumb waiter itself, all belong in the era. So much so, that to try and present it otherwise without some sort of radical rewrite would be quite perverse. To their credit, Steve Steen as Ben and Andy Smart as Gus play the whole dark scene straight down the line. Any temptation to add a post-modern grimace or ironic glance to the dialogue is ignored. In so doing, they do not just maintain the purity of the play but add an extra patina of innocence to it.
|  Steen’s Ben is old and jaded. More tired than he cares to admit, he seems to be carefully guarding his own secrets - not those concerning the job in hand but ones which are much deeper and instinctive. Secrets which, because they are personal, are much more dangerous than that. Smart’s Gus might have a certain youthful outlook but it is all a front, a learned and maintained characteristic which he has forgotten to let go of as he has grown into middle age. And it is this naivete which is his undoing. He is beginning to think for himself and is too open to mask the fact - too open to survive. But looking down on the stage from the 21st century, it is hard not to see the production through cynical eyes. There is even a certain misty-eyed element of regret for the passing of a more innocent age, like watching an old episode of Dixon of Dock Green. And you can’t help thinking that that was then - and wondering what is now. Thom Dibdin |