Tag Archives: Play

Book review

The Dumb Waiter, by Harold Pinter, 1957/1960

I think I am going to try and read, and review, more plays this year, even though I remain steadfast in my view that plays are for watching not reading. Sure you can read them, but in doing so you could easily miss much of the nuance and subtlety of a play that would be brought out in performance.

Just to explain the dates above, the internet tells me that The Dumb Waiter was written in 1957 but not performed until 1960. Either way that makes it one of Pinter’s earliest works. It is a short one-act play in which two men, Ben and Gus, wait in a basement. Ben, apparently the senior member of the two, reads a newspaper, while Gus fusses around nervously. Tea is mentioned but never quite made. As their conversation progresses it emerges that they are hit-men, waiting for an assignment and instructions on who to kill. Their conversation is dominated by mundane, everyday nonsense such as the difference between the phrase ‘light the kettle’ and ‘put on the kettle’. There is almost a vaudeville, back and forth element to their conversation, but at the same time there is a sinister undertone.

Pinter’s stage directions are very detailed and one of the reasons for this emerges when the men realise that at the back of the room is a dumbwaiter, a small lift for carrying food between floors. The waiter starts to deliver a series of food orders, as if to a restaurant kitchen – at first for plain café food – soup of the day, liver and onions, jam tart – and then for more complex orders – macaroni pastistsio, ormitha macaroundada, and scampi. Ben and Gus are dumbfounded by this turn of events, but are so used to doing what they are told that they send up what food they have – milk, biscuits, crisps and chocolate – in a pathetic attempt to comply. . In production I can imagine that this part of the play would be essentially comic, but on the page the tragic element also comes across – they are unable to understand what is happening to them, but still try to do their best. Next to the dumb waiter is a speaking tube which they try to use to communicate with whoever is sending down the orders, but to no avail.

In a break from the dumb waiter’s interruptions, the men start to rehearse the impending assassination, which complies with a strict sequences of events. In doing so they casually but shockingly reveal that their last ‘job’ was to kill a girl.

The impact of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot on this early work by Pinter is immediately obvious – two anonymous characters waiting in a remote location for something to happen, passing time with inane chat that reveals their concerns about their purpose in life. There is no conventional narrative or storyline (although in Pinter’s play there is a dramatic denouement) and absurd and unexplained events challenge the characters’ ideas. Long periods of silence allow space for the claustrophobic tension of the setting to develop. The Dumb Waiter is often produced alongside another of his one-act plays, but I can’t help wonder whether a contrasting text – something by Joe Orton for example – might work as effectively? If you want to read more British post-war plays then The Dumb Waiter is an excellent starting point. Pinter was a key figure in post-war British drama and went on to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2005, being cited for work that “”uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression’s closed rooms”.

The Dumb Waiter, by Harold Pinter, 1957/1960

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Book review

Play review: Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick, by Terry Johnson, 1998

I rarely review plays, but this is after all a reading diary, and I did read this play recently, so I am including it here for completeness. Plays should be seen, not read. Of course read them as well, but the text will only come to life once it is staged, blocked, and performed, when you work out what people are doing while other actors are saying their lines, where people are on the stage, and so on. You can do all that from a read through, but it is a very different experience from reading a novel. I didn’t read Cleo, etc that way – I just read the lines. Which probably took two hours, at most, and may well explain why I was underwhelmed by the experience.

Cleo, etc is a behind the scenes look at the lives and romances of the central characters of the Carry On films – Sid James, Kenneth Williams, and Barbara Williams. Imogen Hassall, who appeared in only one of the Carry On movies, also has a brief appearance intended to bring some pathos to the slapstick and show that all the rampant sexism is not without a price. The play spans a decade or more from when the movies were first popular – Cleo in 1964, the tenth film in the series, regarded sometimes as the best, to Emmanuelle (30) in 1978 in which the already well-scraped barrel was given a final going over.

If you are fan of the Carry On movies, or feel a sense of nostalgia for their amateurish slapstick and smuttiness, this play will act as a reminder of all that was awful about them, as well as their darker side – they seem to have been a bleak experience to make. It is not a coincidence that Johnson has Kenneth Williams sign-off with the line that was to be the last sentence in his diary – “Oh, what’s the bloody point” – before his suicide. There is also a passing reference to murder suicide of Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell in 1967.

I can imagine that in performance this play would have its amusing and touching moments, although the central figure, Sid James, is the least likeable of the cast. But on the page it fails to take off. The challenges of staging this play must be considerable. Most of the action takes place inside the caravan that Sid uses as his dressing room. At one point it rocks side to side as he has sex; on another occasion as a scene climax it collapses. It can imagine this would appear cramped on a large stage with most of the space unused.

Johnson is covering some very familiar territory here – few will be surprised that the clowns of the films had a melancholic side, or that extra-marital affairs and other misdemeanours were commonplace. The point that the smuttiness of the films covered an unhealthy attitude towards sex is hardly a revelation. So ultimately I am not sure there’s much more to say than to echo Kenny’s question – “what’s the bloody point?”

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