Bringing together this duo of dark comedies by one of Britain’s most influential modern dramatists, Harold Pinter, Greenwich Theatre presents their first in-house production of 2023. Both The Dumb Waiter and A Slight Ache were written by Pinter in the late 1950s; two unmissable short plays that explore the political machinations of those in power and those who are powerless. If you love Pinter at his influential, poetic, dramatic and provocative best, you’ll love this duo of brilliant one-act plays.
Starring Kerrie Taylor (TV – Hollyoaks, Where The Heart Is, The Bay) (Stage – Bad Nights and Odd Days and White Rabbit Red Rabbit at Greenwich Theatre), Jude Akuwudike (Stage – Three Sisters at The National Theatre, The Two Noble Kinsmen at The Globe, The Cherry Orchard at Arcola) and Tony Mooney (TV – Scott and Bailey, Casualty, Hollyoaks, Last Tango in Halifax) (Film – Red Riding, Tournament). These two of Pinter’s “Comedies of menace” will be brought to life for this limited three week run.
A Slight Ache examines a middle-aged married couple, who’s dreams and desires are thrown into sharp relief and shaken to the core when a mysterious man is welcomed into their private space. Whilst The Dumb Waiter follows hitmen Gus and Ben, who are awaiting instructions for their next job in a derelict building, when they start to receive strange messages via a dumb waiter.
Artistic Director, James Haddrell says “I am excited to be twinning these two one-act plays by Pinter. At first sight they could not be more different – one a comic visit to a dingy basement where two hitmen await their latest mark, and the other an hour in the home of an upper middle-class couple whose invitation to an itinerant match-seller threatens their settled existence. However, both reveal Pinter’s astonishing ability to identify our insecurities, in the spoken and the unspoken, and to blend the naturalistic with the surreal – and both end with an image that will stay with people long after they’ve left the theatre”.
The Dumb Waiter and A Slight Ache by Harold Pinter is at Greenwich Theatre Friday 12th May – Saturday 3rd June.
