The Dumb Waiter

Gus (Andrew Stainthorpe) and Ben (Steven Bainbridge) are on the job, holed-up in a dingy, disused basement kitchen awaiting their next shady assignment. But their established routine is quickly disrupted when into the waiting silence rattles a dumb waiter with extraordinary demands for dishes they cannot supply.

As the pair blindly try and fulfil the obscure orders that descend from above, they begin to realise that this job is unlike any other. Tensions rise and tempers flare as an unseen power propels them towards a realisation of the true identity of the ‘hit’ and a brutal finale.

Small but perfectly formed, The Dumb Waiter (1957) might be considered the best of Harold Pinter’s early plays. Sinister and to the point, Pinter makes dramatic poetry of the banalities of everyday speech and the precision with which it defines character.