View from the Green Room: Harold Pinter’s absurdist classic
The cast of the Pinter plays performed at Brewery Lane Theatre.
As the lights rise on the cheap hotel room, two figures come into view. We’re guessing here… and we never stop. Ben (Barry Comerford) is composed, patient, drawing on snip bits from an sixties-edition of the Daily Mirror that touch on death by murder or ghastly event. An eight-year-old girl has killed a cat. Someone has died in a bizarre accident.
Gus (Colm Power) is fidgety, anxious, troubled and obsesses with the trivia of Ben’s reports from his tabloid. Anything to pass the time. His constant questioning sets the scene for the elephant-in-the-room question of why they are here in the first place.
The lack of clarity on an over-arching plot is Pinter’s trademark.
“We’re a whole day here now… why doesn’t he tell us what the job is? The answers never come. Just more questions that transfix Gus and irritate Ben.
Ben is in charge. That’s clear. He gives the instructions… "Why don’t you make the tea?”… and becomes physically angry when the tea doesn’t materialise. Gus fidgets in and out to an offstage kitchen or bathroom that is home to a gas ring. But no gas… Gus needs a shilling for the gas meter and neither has one.
The tension increases as the Dumb Waiter – a sliding drawer that crashes up and down – delivers bizarre questions and demands for food.
“Soup of the day… macaroni… Eccles cakes… Chinese dishes…”
The questions multiply. Who is sending down these questions and demands for food? Why send matches if there’s no gas? Who’s playing games with us? as the dumb waiter slams open and shut with an explosive crash that rocks the stage. Like an execution, really. The hangman’s drop as the trapdoor collapses beneath its victim.
When guns appear, we know that the boys are not here for a B&B inspection.
“Him upstairs” becomes a puppet-master who enjoys playing with his servants.
“What’s he playing at… he knows we’ve always done the job… why the games?"
The plot reveals, somewhat, that the “job” is a hit – a mafia-style execution and the victim is already known to the audience. Both actors are excellent. And significantly different. Barry Comerford’s Ben is irascible, inscrutable and enigmatic as he limits his movements to the bare minimum. Colm Power’s Gus is edgy, nervous, fidgety and incredibly physical as he paces the stage and its offstage annexes to pass the time. Liam Butler does a superb job of work here in bringing Pinter’s classic to the Brewery Lane stage. Cramped, confined, obscure and minimalist, this stage offers no escape from Pnter’s nightmare world. The silences, the glances, the variety in pace, intonation and phrasing, along with the many ways of establishing tension, define the excellence of Butler’s direction.
“The Dumb Waiter” raises questions that are never answered. Questions around authority, power, master and servant relationships and the desire for certainty in a changing world.
Well worth the ticket.
