Were Critics Dazzled by a Starry Return of Pinter's The Dumb Waiter?

Jason Isaacs and Lee Evans in The Dumb Waiter

Here’s a sampling of what they had to say:

Mark Shenton in his Theatre.com Review: “Hot on the heels of the dumbing down of a collection of Harold Pinter’s sketches and shorter plays at the hands of TV comedy actors in Pinter’s People, the West End now offers The Dumb Waiter. It may be led by another famous television comedian, but there’s nothing stupid about this show. In fact, the joy of it is just how smart and creatively produced this staging is, intricate in its detail and the minutely calibrated progression of comedy, intrigue, tension and danger that evolves across its short running time... Returning to a play that he also staged a reading of last year as part of the Royal Court’s 50 Readings season, actor-turned-director Harry Burton’s new production is a classic and very classy double act, playing out a sinister dance of death in which an unspoken dread and overpowering sense of foreboding is very much in the air... Burton’s production ratchets up the gathering tension to breaking point. And in Isaacs and Evans, it has its perfect exponents. As he also demonstrated in Beckett’s Endgame, Evans can be both effortlessly funny and vulnerable at the same time. He is one of our most physical comedians, and here he can turn the simple act of tying his shoelaces into a masterpiece of comic invention. And the brilliant Isaacs—his face a mask of inscrutability—himself communicates his mounting irritability and intensity with superb authority. It may be short and far from sweet, but this is also a brutally powerful evening.”

Benedict Nightingale of The London Times: “Both [Jason Isaacs and Lee Evans] are assassins waiting for their prey in the abandoned kitchen beneath a disused cafe in Birmingham. Towards the end they prepare for the evening's business in black suits and ties, like the robbers in Reservoir Dogs. It's as if Tarantino is collaborating with the late Tony Hancock, for the conversation glumly yet comically meanders, with Evans's Gus complaining about the lack of blankets, a good cup of tea, even a nice view of Birmingham, and Isaacs's Ben wearily shutting him up. Mustn't reveal the denouement. Enough to say that Pinter, though not the open dissident he is today, wasn't an apolitical animal in 1958… The play hasn't dated at all, though it's an early example of Pinter's so called comedies of menace. Harry Burton's fine revival generates plenty of menace, notably when a dumb waiter comes banging down with absurd requests for food, indicating the presence of some taunting, dangerous bigwig above. Dark comedy is everywhere, notably in the assassins' quarrel about whether it's correct to say ‘light the kettle’ or ‘light the gas’ - indicating their stress in Pinter's famously oblique style. Both actors communicate that stress, Isaacs through a tensing of the face and body, Evans through escalating chaos and, finally, distraction and panic. The over-the-top folk now performing Pinter's sketches at the Haymarket should study Evans's performance, for it shows you don't have to strain for laughter to be funny. You must simply be truthful, expressing the character's innate anxiety, vulnerability and gormlessness—and you'll be as brilliantly effective as Evans is.”

Jason Isaacs and Lee Evans in The Dumb Waiter

Michael Billington of The Guardian: “This is the real McCoy. After the grisly cock-up of Pinter's People, it is bracing to encounter Harry Burton's superbly orchestrated revival of this 1957 hour-long piece: instead of imposing the comedy on Pinter it allows it to emerge through the interstices of a gripping study of the mechanics of fear… Two crucial design decisions reinforce the play's political overtones. Peter McKintosh's basement is the dingiest I've ever seen, suggesting these two killers are on the lowest ladder of the ‘organisation’. And the dumb waiter is no mere comic device, but a lift that descends from a vast height with the resonance of a guillotine. When it falls for the last time, we know a murder is about to take place. But although the play is a metaphor for institutionalised terror, Burton's production gives full rein to Pinter's comedy. With his scrawny frame, hunching shoulders and too-short, Dickensian trousers, Lee Evans as Gus suggests someone not ideally cut out to be a killer…. Evans has created a real character. The same applies to Jason Isaacs' Ben. There is tension in the way he constantly retreats behind a newspaper. Outwardly dapper and forceful, Isaacs gets across the key point that, even as the senior partner, he suffers a thrill of apprehension. That is what makes this such a fine revival. It reminds us that Pinter knows exactly how to balance comedy and fear to imply that we are all in the grip of invisible, higher powers.”

Charles Spencer of The Daily Telegraph: “After last week's Pinter's People, an abysmally acted collection of the dramatist's often far from scintillating sketches, what a pleasure it is to welcome a production that reveals the master of menace and the pregnant pause at the top of his game. The Dumb Waiter lasts slightly less than an hour, and with top price tickets selling at £30, that works out at just over 50p a minute. But you get a real bang for your buck here, with a wonderfully lean, darkly comic and suspenseful script and cracking performances from that most versatile of comedians, Lee Evans, paired with Jason Isaacs, best known as the sinister Malfoy pére in the Harry Potter films. Pinter wrote The Dumb Waiter at the start of his career as a dramatist back in 1957, yet almost everything that makes his best work distinctive is already in place, not least the sense of edgy unease and the spare precision of his language, which turns the most banal exchanges into often blackly comic stage poetry. Half a century ago, Pinter was a rep actor, working in such unglamorous locations as Whitby, Huddersfield, Worthing and Palmers Green and in The Dumb Waiter he seems to be taking gleeful revenge on all the creaky thrillers in which he had to appear. Out goes plodding exposition and plot, and in comes a new form of drama in which suspense is created simply through the power of language and the spaces between words, plus the unlikely prop of a service lift... Harry Burton's production achieves exactly the right mixture of menace and nervy comedy with the help of a splendidly atmospheric set by Peter McKintosh (you can almost smell the rising damp and the dirty sheets on the single beds) and two outstanding performances.”