Pinter wrote
The Dumb Waiter in 1957 (although it wasn t seen in London until 1960) the year before
The Birthday Party received its notorious première at the Lyric Hammersmith. When a friend described them both as political plays, about power and victimisation, the playwright readily agreed. And it is this aspect of the 50-minute, one-act piece that director Jeremy Herrin foregrounds.
Ben and Gus are two hit men waiting in a Birmingham basement for their latest victim to arrive. The room is furnished merely with two single beds between which is the dumb waiter of the title (although there is an obvious pun here in that both men are obliged to wait and both are, to a greater or lesser extent, lacking information and agency). Their surroundings are basic, in Hyemi Shin s stark, grey design especially so. When the dumb waiter judders into action it delivers requests for meals impossible for the pair to deliver; there is a kitchen off to the side, but no means of lighting the gas l
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