Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Age concern | 14 February 2019

Plus: it's hard to know if the central concept of Pinter's A Slight Ache is terrible or brilliant

The Dumb Waiter is a one-act play from 1957 that retains an extraordinary hold over the minds of theatre-goers. It’s set in the basement of a Birmingham restaurant where two Cockney hitmen are preparing to execute an unknown victim. A dumb waiter, or shelf on pulleys, descends from above containing requests for two-course meals. Liver and onions are on the menu. Demands for cups of tea and sago pudding are sent down. The nervous thugs start to panic as they struggle to fulfil the instructions arriving from on high. It’s an absurd situation underpinned by an authentic sense of menace and violence. These are not just clownish villains but real criminals trained to kill.

The play is usually done for laughs but it can be performed as a macabre thriller. Jamie Lloyd’s version plumps for comedy. The dumb waiter, with a pinkish internal light and a thumping great soundtrack to herald its movements, becomes a burlesque character in its own right. Only at the end, when its hatch descends in a creepy silence, does it acquire a hint of danger.

The casting of the thugs is eccentric and unsuccessful. Gus is a diffident and garrulous youngster, full of queries and blurted comments, who breaks an unwritten rule by talking openly about his victims. He pesters his older colleague, Ben, to tell him how the corpses are disposed of after a hit. Cynical Ben, sulking over his tabloid, tries to teach Gus by example that a hard-working murderer should speak as sparingly as possible, if at all. Gus doesn’t get it and keeps needling and bothering his mentor.

But the master-servant relationship is undone by the choice of Martin Freeman, 47, as Gus, and of Danny Dyer, 41, as Ben. Physical details accentuate the age gap.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in