The Dumb Waiter: A Partially successful production at the Avalon Studio Theatre
Photo: Richard Ellis. Mary Ellis (Augusta ), Kristina Watt (Benita)
“What’s going on here?” asks Gus at one point in The Dumb Waiter. The question is a waste of breath: Gus and fellow armed thug Ben are in a Harold Pinter play and Pinter’s never big on providing answers regardless of whether questions are about quotidian or existential issues.
Besides, even if there were an answer, would it give Gus and Ben an escape route from the faceless and oppressive power structure that’s steamrolling over them?
Third Wall Theatre’s revival of Pinter’s late 1950s play, directed by Todd Duckworth, is partially successful in dealing with these and other matters.
Mary Ellis plays the chatty, questioning Gus while Kristina Watt is the taciturn and controlling Ben. Usually the roles are filled by men, but changing the characters to women (Augusta and Benita to be formal) works fine: male or female, the two still have to wait in a grungy basement for their assignment from an unseen boss.
They still have to contend with a dumb waiter descending from above with a mighty groan and demanding that they prepare meals even though they have no food.
They still have to endure a steadily increasing sense of menace and confusion that frustrate at every turn their attempt to use logic and language to understand what’s happening.
To get all this right, though, requires more than this production offers.
Ben, for example, needs to be almost consumed by an unexplained rage if her occasional jettisoning of self-control is to resonate. Watt’s Ben fumes, but that’s not rage.
Ellis’ Gus takes too long to gain traction, though once she does she’s a powerful presence.
And while the production does often nail the play’s difficult shifts in rhythm and mood, this Ben and Gus don’t have the intense connection that the show demands.
Which is why when the final scene arrives it sizzles, but it doesn’t scorch…….READ ON
Wathe The Dumb Waiter
Third Wall Theatre Company
Avalon Studio, 738A Bank St.
Reviewed March 22