`Dumb Waiter‘ show‘s Pinter‘s comic side
Staff and agencies By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer 2 minutes ago LONDON - Harold Pinter is serious. As Britain‘s greatest living playwright, he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2005 for drama that "forces entry into oppression‘s closed rooms." These days he spends much of his time excoriating the United States and British governments over the war in Iraq . The more traditional — and successful — is "The Dumb Waiter," a menacing two-act play first performed in 1960. The play is set in a nasty cellar where the anxious Gus (Evans) and the stolid Ben (Jason Isaac‘s) read the newspaper, discuss sports, seek a cup of tea — and wait. The characters‘ rising confusion, anger and frustration become increasingly tense — and, yes, funny. Evans, who made a West End splash in 2004 starring opposite Nathan Lane in Mel Brooks ‘ exuberant musical, "The Producers," mines a vein of fidgety anxiety not far removed from his standup persona. It‘s tempered by Isaacs — a versatile actor known to millions as Lucius Malfoy in the " Harry Potter " movies — who is a model of simmering restraint as the taciturn, slow-boiling Ben. The dumb waiter is a potent symbol of the unseen and seemingly irrational forces that govern human lives, and the characters‘ attempts to comprehend and mollify its demands are both funny and moving. Less successful, according to the London critics, is "Pinter‘s People," running at the Theatre Royal Haymarket until the end of February. The show is a collection of Pinter sketches performed by a cast of comedians led by comic Bill Bailey. "Comedy, I sometimes think, is too serious a matter to be left to comedians," he wrote. "The Dumb Waiter" plays at Trafalgar Studios through March 24.
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