I've seen The Dumb Waiter and I had the most fantastic time.
 
I saw the play on Saturday, 17th February, and though it is only about an hour long it had me enthralled from start to finish. From the moment you enter the auditorium you could say the play had started because they do not open the doors until 7.30pm (the production was due to begin at 7.45pm) and both actors are already on stage, laying on their respective beds. Jason and Lee stay like this, with the odd twitch for the next 15 minutes until the house lights go down.
 
My husband and I had great seats, which were in the middle of a row towards the front and because Studio 1 is quite steeply tiered we could see everything that happened on stage without the view being hindered by the heads of people in front of us.
 
Once the house lights had gone down Jason picked up his newspaper and started to read it and Lee started to put on his shoes in the most comical of ways, finding all sorts of bits and pieces in them. The chemistry between the characters was brilliant, Jason (Ben) was initially the straight man to Lee's (Gus) comic but as the play progressed you begin to see why the men are as they are. Gus's comedy hides his insecurities about his job (they are both hit men) and what is going to be asked to do next. The sitting and waiting for instructions makes Gus more on edge than ever, where as Ben attempts to detach himself from his occupation and the wait for further instructions by reading the newspaper and talking about things other than the situation he finds himself in. Ben is the senior partner and ties to take control of the situation by trying to calm down and reassure his partner as Gus becomes more and more agitated especially when the gas runs out and he can't have his cup of tea.
 
The dumbwaiter clatters into life giving the men stranger and stranger orders, usually list of meals they want sending upstairs. This unnerves both of them as they try to understand the requests and satisfy the food needs of the person or persons unseen. Eventually they find a speaking tube next to the dumbwaiter and they start to hold what appears to the audience as a one way conversation with those upstairs, this was quite funny as you try to imagine the part of the conversation you cannot hear. It was made funnier by the fact that Jason kept forgetting to take the 'speaking tube' from his ear when he made his reply to what he just been listening to.  
 
The audience laughed their way from one gag/ one liner to the next until the last few minutes when there was total silence as the play climaxed. Jason and Lee's performances were fantastic and their characters believable, and even though Jason was on stage I cannot say I spent my entire time watching him as Lee was just as enthralling. I have never seen a Harold Pinter play before but I have read quite a few negative things about his writing, in fact there were people in the audience who were moaning about him but once the play was over they were clapping just as hard as everyone else.
 
Right, that's my review and as you could probably guess I loved every minute of it, as did my husband.

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Once the play was over I dragged my husband round to the stage door and then made him wait a further half an hour until Jason made an appearance. Jason quite happily signed autographs for fans but he became a little agitated when he thought  some professional autograph hunters/sellers might be there and he has expressed his dislike, in the past, of signing autographs for what he thought were genuine fans only to find them for sale on eBay etc. He doesn’t like it. Therefore he would only sign one of the two programmes I had. I understood why he would sign it and he had already signed one and a picture I’d compiled of a few of my favourite sigbars . In fact my husband swears I embarrassed him because one of the sigbars that made up the picture was my current one. When Jason saw it all he could say was “That’s my bum, she’s got a picture of my bum.” But he still signed it and I will treasure it and the programme they are mine and not for re-sale.
 
So I’ve embarrassed him what next you may ask, well he when he was confident that he given all the genuine fans autographs he said that if anyone was to write to him, he always replied and would send a sign picture to them. When he said this I was stood next to him and before I could help myself I replied “No you don’t.” He snorted, smiled and said “No I don’t.”  
 
I’ve embarrassed him and now I’ve told him off, I should have disappeared into the night but I realised that the picture my husband had taken whilst Jason was signing my programme hadn’t come out. Panic! By now Lee Evans had appeared at the stage door and Jason used this opportunity to make his exit but before he disappeared I ran to ask him if he have his photo taken with me and he agreed.  He put his arm around me and my husband took the picture, now it is not a great picture of Jason because he was still trying to explain to a persistent  autograph hunter  that he'd signed one picture for him and he wasn’t going to sign another. In fact is a terrible picture of me but I have got a picture of Jason Isaacs with his arm around me and I am a happy woman.
 
As I’ve already said I’ve embarrassed him, told him off and he still agreed to having his picture taken I should have quit but I had failed in one of my promises to Alys, I hadn’t succeeded in getting her a signed programme I wasn’t about to fail in my other promise, that of promoting the MagnificentPercy.com to the man who'd inspired its conception. Therefore, as everyone else was now busy with Lee, I took the opportunity to hand Jason a copy of the forum’s current banner on to which I’d copied the forum’s address and admin e-mail. He looked at the picture said thank you, that he did know about us and that he does visit!  Jason was amazed that a whole website had been created around this one particular character and it was at this point that he brought the man who was with him into the conversation. The man turned out to be his brother and according to Jason he has never seen The Last Minute, so Jason was trying to explain to him that there was this website based on a character he’d played called Dave ‘Percy’ Sledge, his brother wasn’t impressed and  had a look on his face that said ‘Yes, so what’. Jason looked shattered so I thanked him for his time, complemented him on the play and said good-bye, he said good-night and disappeared with his brother towards Trafalgar Square and my husband and I went to find somewhere to have dinner. I was a happy lady.
 
Therefore Jason, if you do pay us the occasional visit I’d like to say thank you once again for taking time out to talk to me about Percy, when all really probably wanted to do was go home to your family. However, the biggest thank you I have to make is to my husband for indulging me and accompanying me to London and the play, for standing at the stage door and for taking a photograph of his wife with another man!  
 
Copy of the sigbars he signed  

 
Jason at the stage door

 

 
Jason and me