THE DUMB WAITER
The problem is that neither the director (Frank Bartella) nor the actors (Frank Adducci and Kurt Christensen) has any idea how Pinter should be performed. They all seem to think–God knows why–that Pinter should be played as loudly and with as much emotionalism as possible. Why talk when you can shout? this production asks. Why shout when you can scream and gesture wildly? Why not play Pinter ten times louder and broader than he has ever been played before?
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The result is that all of the subtlety, suspense, and comedy in Pinter’s play –about a couple of lower-class hit men hanging out in a basement waiting for word from their boss about their next job–is completely lost. Clearly Bartella et al have been misled by all those commentators who point out the violence that seethes just beneath the surface of Pinter’s pauses and his characters’ odd, non sequitur-laden dialogue. Why bury all this emotion in the subtext? Bartella seems to ask. Why not drag all of it out onto the stage, where everyone can see it?
Instead of working on making Gus’s relationship with Ben clear, Christensen focuses his energy on getting all the cheap laughs he can. For example, at the beginning of the play he turns Pinter’s simple stage direction–“tying shoelaces, with difficulty”–into a mighty struggle, trying again and again to lace his shoes with a pair of tipless shoelaces. After three minutes of the silly and tiresome shtick, Christensen is reduced to getting a gross-out laugh by putting the end of the shoelace in his mouth.
