''The Dumb Waiter'' is a one-act play by
Harold Pinter written in 1957.
"Small but perfectly formed, ''The Dumb Waiter'' might be considered the best of Harold Pinter's early plays, more consistent than
''The Birthday Party'' and sharper than ''
The Caretaker
''The Caretaker'' is a play in three acts by Harold Pinter. Although it was the sixth of his major works for stage and television, this psychological study of the confluence of power, allegiance, innocence, and corruption among two brothers a ...
''. It combines the classic characteristics of early Pinter – a paucity of information and an atmosphere of menace, working-class small-talk in a claustrophobic setting – with an oblique but palpable political edge and, in so doing, can be seen as containing the germ of Pinter's entire dramatic oeuvre".
[Derbyshire, Harry. "Harold Pinter's The Dumb Waiter (review)", ''Modern Drama'', vol 53, no 2 (2010), pp266-268.]
"''The Dumb Waiter'' is Pinter distilled – the very essence of a writer who tapped into our desire to seek out meaning, confront injustice and assert our individuality."
[Glover, Jamie. "The Dumb Waiter" (programme notes). The Print Room, 2013.]
Plot
Two
hit-men, Ben and Gus, are waiting in a basement room for their assignment. As the play begins, Ben, the senior member of the team, is reading a newspaper, and Gus, the junior member, is tying his shoes. Gus asks Ben many questions as he gets ready for their job and tries to make tea. They argue over the
semantics
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comp ...
of "light the kettle" and "put on the kettle". Ben continues reading his paper for most of the time, occasionally reading excerpts of it to Gus. Ben gets increasingly animated, and Gus's questions become more pointed, at times nearly nonsensical.
In the back of the room is a
dumbwaiter
A dumbwaiter is a small freight elevator or lift intended to carry food. Dumbwaiters found within modern structures, including both commercial, public and private buildings, are often connected between multiple floors. When installed in restau ...
, which delivers occasional food orders. This is mysterious and both characters seem to be puzzled why these orders keep coming; the basement is clearly not outfitted as a restaurant kitchen. At one point they send up some snack food that Gus had brought along. Ben has to explain to the people above via the dumbwaiter's "speaking tube" that there is no food.
Gus leaves the room to get a drink of water in the bathroom, and the dumbwaiter's speaking tube whistles (a sign that there is a person on the other end who wishes to communicate). Ben listens carefully—we gather from his replies that their victim has arrived and is on his way to the room. Ben shouts for Gus, who is still out of the room. The door that the target is supposed to enter from flies open, Ben rounds on it with his gun, and Gus enters, stripped of his jacket, waistcoat, tie and gun. There is a long silence as the two stare at each other before the curtain falls.
Title
The
dumb waiter of the title refers to the serving hatch and food lift that delivers orders to the gunmen. It could also refer to Gus, who fails to realise that he is waiting to be the victim, or even to Ben, whose obedience to a higher authority eventually forces him to eliminate his partner.
[Billington, Michael. ''Harold Pinter''. Faber & Faber, 2nd edition, 2007, p89 et seq.]
Setting
The windowless basement is characteristic of Pinter's sets. "Pinter's rooms are stuffy, non-specific cubes, whose atmosphere grows steadily more stale and more tense. At the opening curtain these rooms look naturalistic, meaning no more than the eye can contain. But, by the end of each play, they become sealed containers, virtual coffins."
[Cohn, Ruby. "The World of Harold Pinter", ''Tulaine Drama Review'', 6 (March 1962), pp55-7.]
Style
Pinter's writing in ''The Dumb Waiter'' combines "the staccato rhythms of music-hall cross-talk and the urban thriller".
The dialogue between Ben and Gus, while seemingly concerned only with trivial newspaper stories, football matches and cups of tea, reveals their characters. In Pinter's early plays, "it is language that betrays the villains – more pat, more cliché-ridden, with more brute power than that of their victims".
In the theatre, the emotional power of the play is more readily felt than understood. Pinter "created his own theatrical grammar – he didn't merely write characters that had an emotional response to something... But instead, through his characters' interactions and phrasings, Pinter seemed to conjure the very visceral emotion itself".
Interpretation
Although the play is realistic in many ways, particularly the dialogue between Ben and Gus, there are also elements that are unexplained and seemingly absurd, particularly the messages delivered by the dumb waiter itself, and the delivery of an envelope containing twelve matchsticks. Pinter leaves the plays open to interpretation, "wanting his audience to complete his plays, to resolve in their own ways these irresolvable matters".
[Lawford, Cindy. ] Pinter stated that "between my lack of biographical data about
he charactersand the ambiguity of what they say lies a territory which is not only worthy of exploration but which it is compulsory to explore".
One interpretation is that the play is an absurdist comedy about two men waiting in a universe without meaning or purpose, like
Samuel Beckett's ''
Waiting for Godot''. "The Dumb Waiter.... achieves, through its unique blend of absurdity, farce, and surface realism, a profoundly moving statement about the modern human condition".
[Brewer, Mary F. (Ed) "Harold Pinter's The Dumb Waiter". Rodopi, 2009]
Another interpretation is that the play is a political drama showing how the individual is destroyed by a higher power. "Each of Harold Pinter's
irst
An infrared search and track (IRST) system (sometimes known as infrared sighting and tracking) is a method for detecting and tracking objects which give off infrared radiation, such as the infrared signatures of jet aircraft and helicopters.
IR ...
four plays ends in the virtual annihilation of an individual.... It is by his bitter dramas of dehumanisation that he implies "the importance of humanity". The religion and society, which have traditionally structured human morality, are, in Pinter's plays, the immoral agents that destroy the individual."
Pinter supported the interpretation of
''The Birthday Party'' and ''The Dumb Waiter'' as "political plays about power and victimisation".
Overall, "it makes much more sense if seen as a play about the dynamics of power and the nature of partnership. Ben and Gus are both victims of some unseen authority and a surrogate married couple quarrelling, testing, talking past each other and raking over old times".
It is "a strongly political play about the way a hierarchical society, in pitting the rebel against the conformist, places both at its mercy", but at the same time "a deeply personal play about the destructiveness of betrayal".
"For an audience to gaze into Ben and Gus' closed basement room and overhear their everyday prattle is to gain insight into ... the terrifying vision of the dominant-subservient battle for power, a battle in which societies and individuals engage as a part of daily existence".
Comedy
Although the play uses "the semantic nit-picking that is a standard part of music hall comedy"
and is generally considered funny, this is not comedy for its own sake, but "a crucial part of the power-structure".
"The comedy routines in the early plays are maps to the themes and meaning of the plays as a whole.... Our failure to laugh may be an indication that we, the audience, have come to side (or have been taught to side) with the victim rather than the victimiser."
[ Coppa, Francesca. "The Sacred Joke: Comedy and Politics in Pinter’s Early Plays", ''The Cambridge Companion to Harold Pinter''. Cambridge University Press, 2009.]
The stories Ben picks out from his newspaper have a similar purpose. He describes an old man, wanting to cross the street, who crawls under a lorry and is run over by it (but it is not clear if the man is killed or not). Ben seems to expect the response, "What an idiot!" but Gus replies "Who advised him to do a thing like that?" which shifts responsibility and suggests the old man was a victim to be pitied. "The eventual split between Ben and Gus is foreshadowed in the very first joke.... By the end of the play, Pinter has trained us to see that the content of the joke-exchange is meaningless: what is important is the structure, and the alliances and antagonisms it reveals."
Performance history
Frankfurt
The world premiere was in Frankfurt as ''Der Stumme Diener'' in February 1959 with Rudolf H. Krieg as Ben and Werner Berndt as Gus.
London
The first performance in London was in January 1960, as part of a double bill with Pinter's first play ''
The Room
''The Room'' is a 2003 American drama film written, produced, executive produced and directed by Tommy Wiseau, who stars in the film alongside Juliette Danielle and Greg Sestero. The film centers on a melodramatic love triangle between amia ...
'', at the
Hampstead Theatre Club
Hampstead Theatre is a theatre in South Hampstead in the London Borough of Camden. It specialises in commissioning and producing new writing, supporting and developing the work of new writers. Roxana Silbert has been the artistic director since ...
, directed by
James Roose-Evans
James Roose-Evans (11 November 1927 – 26 October 2022) was a British theatre director, priest, and writer on experimental theatre, ritual and meditation. In 1959 he founded the Hampstead Theatre Club, in London; in 1974 the Bleddfa Centre for ...
, with
Nicholas Selby
Nicholas Selby (born James Ivor Selby, 13 September 1925 – 14 September 2010) was a British film, television and theatre actor. He appeared in more than one hundred television dramas on the BBC and ITV during the course of his career, inclu ...
as Ben and George Tovey as Gus. The production transferred to the
Royal Court Theatre
The Royal Court Theatre, at different times known as the Court Theatre, the New Chelsea Theatre, and the Belgravia Theatre, is a non-commercial West End theatre in Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England ...
in March 1960.
In 1989 a revival at the
Theatre Royal Haymarket
The Theatre Royal Haymarket (also known as Haymarket Theatre or the Little Theatre) is a West End theatre on Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use. Samuel Foot ...
was directed by Bob Carlton, with Peter Howitt as Ben and Tim Healy as Gus.
In 2007 a revival at the
Trafalgar Studios
Trafalgar Theatre is a new West End theatre in Whitehall, near Trafalgar Square, in the City of Westminster, London. It is set to open in spring 2021 following a major multi-million pound restoration project aiming to reinstate it back to its ...
was directed by Harry Burton, with
Jason Isaacs
Jason Isaacs (born 6 June 1963) is an English actor.
Isaac's film roles include Col. Tavington in '' The Patriot'' (2000), Michael D. Steele in '' Black Hawk Down'' (2001), Lucius Malfoy in the ''Harry Potter'' film series (2002–2011), Ca ...
as Ben and
Lee Evans as Gus.
In 2013 a revival at
The Print Room
The Coronet Theatre, formerly The Print Room, is an Off West End theatre located in the former Coronet Cinema in London. The building originated as a theatre in 1898; the modern company was founded in Westbourne Grove, West London, and opened i ...
was directed by
Jamie Glover
Jamie Blair Glover (born 10 July 1969) is an English actor. He is best known for being cast as Harry Potter in the second cast of the West-End production of ''Harry Potter and the Cursed Child'' in 2017. He portrayed Deputy Head Andrew Treneman ...
, with
Clive Wood
Clive Wood (born 8 May 1954) is an English actor, known for his television roles in ''Press Gang'' (1989–93), ''The Bill'' (1990), '' London's Burning'' (1996–99), and as King Henry I in ''The Pillars of the Earth'' (2010). His stage roles inc ...
as Ben and
Joe Armstrong as Gus.
In 2019 the play was part of a season of Pinter's one-act plays at the
, directed by
Jamie Lloyd
Jamie Lloyd is a fictional character and one of the main protagonists of the ''Halloween'' franchise. Introduced in '' Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers'' as the series' new protagonist after Jamie Lee Curtis declined to return as Laurie ...
with
Danny Dyer
Danial John Dyer (born 24 July 1977) is an English actor and presenter. Dyer's breakthrough role was as Moff in ''Human Traffic'', with other notable roles as Mick Carter in EastEnders, Billy the Limpet in '' Mean Machine'' and as Tommy Johns ...
as Ben and
Martin Freeman
Martin John Christopher Freeman (born 8 September 1971) is an English actor. Among other accolades, he has won an Emmy Award, a BAFTA Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award, and has been nominated for a Golden Globe Award.
Freeman's most not ...
as Gus.
In 2020 a 60th anniversary revival at the
Hampstead Theatre
Hampstead Theatre is a theatre in South Hampstead in the London Borough of Camden. It specialises in commissioning and producing new writing, supporting and developing the work of new writers. Roxana Silbert has been the artistic director since ...
, directed by Alice Hamilton with
Alec Newman as Ben and
Shane Zaza as Gus, had an extended run in a COVID secure setting with the audience masked and socially distanced.
Oxford
In 2004
The Oxford Playhouse
Oxford Playhouse is a theatre designed by Edward Maufe and F.G.M. Chancellor. It is situated in Beaumont Street, Oxford, opposite the Ashmolean Museum.
History
The Playhouse was founded as ''The Red Barn'' at 12 Woodstock Road, North Oxfo ...
presented ''The Dumb Waiter'' and Other Pieces by Harold Pinter, directed by
Douglas Hodge
Douglas Hodge is an English actor, director, and musician who has had an extensive career in theatre, as well as television and film where he has appeared in '' Robin Hood'' (2010), '' Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return'' and '' Diana'' (2013), '' ...
with
Jason Watkins
Jason Watkins (born 28 October 1962) is an English stage, film and television actor. He played the lead role in the two-part drama ''The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies'', for which he won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actor. He has also ...
as Ben and
Toby Jones
Tobias Edward Heslewood Jones''Births, Marriages & Deaths Index of England & Wales, 1916–2005.''; at ancestry.com (born 7 September 1966) is an English actor. Jones made his film debut in Sally Potter's period drama '' Orlando'' in 1992. H ...
as Gus.
Liverpool
In 2012 a young Mark Pallister took on the role of Gus as original cast member the now Famous Lee Evans was unavailable due to his touring schedule.
Mark went on to take further acting roles however it is not known if he is still pursuing an acting career today.
Chicago
In 2012 The
TUTA Theater company presented ''The Dumb Waiter'
Toronto
In April 2021, th
Crane Creations Theatre Companyled a play reading of ''The Dumb Waiter'' in its monthly play reading event''.'' Hosted by a group of professional theatre artists, th
Play Dateevent aims to spread awareness of playwrights and playwrighting from around the globe.
Television films
* 1959 – the play was turned down by the BBC, being considered "too obscure" for the TV audience.
* 1985 –
Kenneth Ives
Kenneth Ainsworth Ives (26 March 1934 – 6 March 2022) was a British actor turned television director with a number of 1960s and 1970s television credits.
As an actor, he appeared in the 1968 film version of '' The Lion in Winter'' as Queen E ...
directed a
made-for-TV
A television film, alternatively known as a television movie, made-for-TV film/movie or TV film/movie, is a feature-length film that is produced and originally distributed by or to a television network, in contrast to theatrical films made for ...
feature film version of ''The Dumb Waiter'', starring
Kenneth Cranham
Kenneth Cranham (born 12 December 1944) is a Scottish film, television, radio and stage actor.
Early life
Cranham was born in Dunfermline, Fife, the son of Lochgelly-born Margaret McKay Cranham (née Ferguson) and Ronald Cranham, a London-bor ...
and
Colin Blakely
Colin George Blakely (23 September 1930 – 7 May 1987) was a Northern Irish actor. He had roles in the films '' A Man for All Seasons'' (1966), '' The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes'' (1970), '' Murder on the Orient Express'' (1974), and '' ...
, first broadcast by the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
in July 1985.
on 12 May 1987, as part of Altman's two-part series entitled ''Basements''; part one is Pinter's first play ''
''.