Presentation House, Studio 16, &
The Vancouver East Cultural Centre’s Culture Lab
October, November, December 2008
Directed by John Wright
Set & Costume Design by Marti Wright
Lighting Design by Mélissa Powell
Stage Managed by Noa Anatot
Production Management by Jayson McLean
CAST: Anthony F. Ingram, Simon Webb, Kevin Williamson
photos by Tim Matheson
Harold Pinter may be best-known for his full-length masterpieces like The Birthday Party and Betrayal, but his short “dramatic sketches” are a gold mine of incisive, darkly funny slices of the playwright’s world. Pairing these treasures with Pinter’s absurd, tragicomic 1957 one-act, The Dumb Waiter, makes for an unpredictable and spellbinding night at the theatre.
In The Dumb Waiter, relationships of power and hierarchy are explored as two assassins receive more and more confusing instructions on how to approach their next target. The action, such as it is, takes place in the context of their tense wait for the target to arrive – and for further instructions from above. It comes as no surprise to learn that The Dumb Waiter premiered just six years after Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.
“I mean, you come into a place when it’s still dark, you come into a room you’ve never seen before, you sleep all day, you do your job, and then you go away in the night.”
The Dumb Waiter
What makes Pinter one of the most important modern British dramatists is… the fact that in language and pattern he is a poet, and his existential insight into human beings’ place in the universe, which connects him with the most profound writers and thinkers of his time.
Nasrullah Mambrol, literariness.org
Simon Webb, Anthony F. Ingram
"Blackbird Theatre hasn't visited Harold Pinter since The Birthday Party. The company's much-praised 2006 production was so delicious that Blackbird's return to the works of the modern British master has been eagerly anticipated." Vancouver Sun
