Intelligent chat about The Dumb Waiter
About the show
Burton: “You can enjoy it on a number of different levels. It works as political thriller, it works as vaudevillian double-act comedy, and I think with these two actors we do have the chance to explore, particularly the comedy.”
Evans: “They set it up so that we have to lie in beds before the show starts and my general instinct is to do something, because I can hear the noise of the audience, so initially it’s kind of difficult. I’m just sort of lying on that bed going ‘relax, concentrate, concentrate’ and I’m thinking about the play. Once you join Jason in the room you’re off and running.”
Isaacs: “It’s alive every night. We get out there and we don’t know quite what the other one’s going to do. It’s like a dance partner, you just go ‘wherever you go I’ll follow’. It’s exciting.”
About the press night
Burton: “We’ve been working hard through previews and I had my pad with me. After about five minutes I thought ‘just try and enjoy it’ and I didn’t make a single note. I found watching it without my director’s hat on, just as a punter, took me 20 minutes to relax but after that, to be honest, I really did just enjoy it. I think they’re terrific. They have to be allowed to run with it now, it’s theirs now, I’ve done what I can.”
Evans: “It was a bit nerve-wracking because we had Harold [Pinter] in. I was a bit nervous, but once you’re up and going…”
Isaacs: “I said Lee’s line once and ruined a huge laugh. There’s a big, fantastic gag coming and I blew it. Apart from that it went fine.
“I’ll start enjoying it from tomorrow. It’s a big night, because how it’s received dictates whether we get an audience or not, although apparently it’s selling very well already.
“It’s a funny audience because no-one pays at a press night. I prefer paying audiences because there’s a different investment in it.”
Isaacs, Pinter and Evans enjoy a post-performance chat.
About Lee Evans
Burton: “Lee is the most wonderfully natural actor and I doubt there’s ever been a Gus who’s made so much of some of these lines. He’s so inventive, we’ve had to pare him back to an essence, but that’s been a very exciting process anyway, to watch Lee begin to trust himself as an actor.”
Evans: “My job is to learn and that’s what I do. I work with proper actors like Jason and Harry the director and Harold and I learn so much. That’s what I need to do.
“I have no job really, whatever comes my way of interest is what I’ll grasp or go after. This script came up, I heard about it and I wanted to do it. To do a bit of Pinter; you’re just going to learn loads of stuff.”
About impressing Harold Pinter:
Isaacs: “He came on Friday night and he absolutely loved it, and we changed it enormously since then. We’ve taken a lot of the laughs out because we felt we were getting laughs at the expense of the play instead of from the play. Tonight it was very good in a different way – the comedy comes from the play – but he was so complimentary on Friday we were hoping he’d still like it, and luckily he does.”
