Pinter and Beckett at the Crease "Do you subscribe to nominative determinism? "Pinter Andrew Lancel as Harold Pinter and Stephen Tomlinson as Samuel Beckett (Photo: Pamela Raith) Stumped is the…
The Dumb Waiter is a quintessential early Pinter play from 1960, one that feels almost Beckettian if not absurdist. It is set in a room, a situation with bags of sinister mystery with just two players. I always think of what the French writer Jean Anouilh said about Waiting for Godot on seeing Beckett's play for the first time in Paris in 1953. "Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful."
Revived half a century after it was written, Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter was actually first staged in Germany. It wasn’t until 1960 that it was seen in Pinter’s home country at the Hampstead Theatre where it formed a twin bill with The Room. Since then it has been regularly revived in the theatre and filmed and televised and performed internationally. Two quite amazing actors come together to play the parts of Ben and Gus, the enigmatic pair who find themselves waiting for something we can never be sure about, but which we suspect they do.