Teacher: Vicente Forés
Course: Filología Inglesa
I
Harold Pinter, The Dumb
Waiter
Hampstead Theatre Club, 21st
January, 1960
Directed by James
Roose-Evans
Nicholas Selby as
“Ben”
George Tovey as “Gus”
This
play has only two characters: Ben and Gus. Both them are a group of
gangsters
that are hidden in the basement room of a derelict strange café. Ben is the
head of the group, he is always reading the same newspaper and ordering
tasks
to Gus, he is very angry, specially with Gus; Gus is Ben’s subordinated,
he is
very nervous (he is often moving around the room) and it seems he enjoys
arguing with Ben and making him angry. Both are dressed in shirts,
trousers and
braces (however, Gus sometimes has his shoelaces
untied).
The
characters are hidden in a basement room, waiting to the orders of their
boss
“Wilson”, but there is a serving hatch in the middle of the room that is
sending often some strange messages to them, these messages contain
orders of
food and they will have to improvise these orders with the few food they
have
(the food is in bad conditions). So, at the end, there is a final
message from
the speaking-tube, but this time the orders are from their boss: the play
finishes with Ben and Gus looking to theirselves.
All
the action happens at the same scene: a dark basement room with two beds, a
door to a kitchen (on the left), a door to a passage (on the right), a
lavatory
that does not flush and a “serving hatch” (“the dumb waiter’s” reference)
between the beds. There is a geographical reference too, the location of the
café is in Birmingham, in West Midlands of England.
The
action may occur in the first half of the twentieth century, I think between
the twenties and thirties because the aspect of details: a revolver (not a
gun), matches (not a gas lighter), a speaking-tube (not a mobile phone), the
aesthetics of gangsters (¿in Great Britain?), etc. One important aspect
of time
is that Gus in one moment affirms that they were “on Friday”, but there are
some “temporal jumps” when they receive the different messages from the
serving
hatch (this is because the speed of change with the owner of the
café).
The
language used
is not very complex, this is because the characters are lower-class
people and
they say often some onomatopoeic expressions and colloquialisms like “Kaw!”,
“You birk!”, “Blimey”, etc.
“The
Dumb Waiter” is a funny play that makes the spectator/reader some strange
addiction to it, I think this because the feeling of “I don’t know what it’s
happening at the moment”, so the spectator is chained to finish the play to
find the sense of the message.