Wednesday, October 15, 1997
‘Dumb Waiter’ focuses on ordinary lives
THEATER Play finds the extraordinary behind mundanity of daily
life
By Kristi Nakamura
Daily Bruin Contributor
Do what you’re told and there’ll be no trouble. Don’t stop to
think and don’t question orders. Accept everything as ordinary,
even on days that seem frighteningly extraordinary. Remember that
you are expendable and can be replaced.
These are the rules hired assassins Ben and Gus must play by if
they are going to survive.
Beginning Oct. 15, The Bread and Roses Theatre Company will
present Harold Pinter’s "The Dumb Waiter" at the Lee Stratsberg
Theatre Institute. For 16 performances, they will guide Ben and
Gus, the two main characters, through a day that is completely
controlled by the establishment.
The Bread and Roses Theatre Company certainly understands the
dilemma of working within a larger organization. Before they formed
Bread and Roses, all three members were a part of the 1996-97 Royal
Shakespeare Company (RSC) in England.
"We kind of work into other areas we wouldn’t have touched at
the RSC," says Mark Gillis, the producer who also plays the role of
Gus. "Being that small gives (Bread and Roses) the chance, the
opportunity to work in ways that in a bigger organization you
wouldn’t be able to do."
Although it is a far cry from Shakespeare’s work, Bread and
Roses chose to perform Pinter’s "The Dumb Waiter" because of the
previous success it enjoyed during last season’s run in England.
Gillis and friends Susannah Elliott-Knight and Dominic Carter had
worked on "The Dumb Waiter" outside of the Royal Shakespeare
Company reperatoire and presented it while they were still with the
Royal Shakespeare Company.
When their contracts with the Royal Shakespeare Company expired,
Gillis, Elliott-Knight and Carter took "The Dumb Waiter," and began
to produce it for their own company.
"It’s a play that I’ve been interested in for a long time,"
Gillis says. "It seems to me to have a really good balance between
being very funny and incredibly menacing as well."
Without much action taking place for most of the play, the
dialogue sustains the plot. Pinter’s wit and cleverness manage to
create an uncomfortable atmosphere. Gillis utilizes this discomfort
to bring out a duality in his character.
"He’s a fascinating character because on that one level he’s got
that childlike quality and yet he’s a killer. They are both
professional assassins," Gillis says. "So its a fascinating kind of
mixture of this character who has done terrible things for a whole
chunk of his life and yet you can still see the child."
The play takes place over the course of a day that begins just
like any other. Ben and Gus are on a job and must wait for their
orders. Only then do things begin to go awry in subtle ways that
foreshadow larger troubles for the pair.
"(The Dumb Waiter) is 50 minutes and the journey from beginning
to end is from everyday breakfast conversation to a very deep sense
of betrayal and loss and imminent death," director Elliott-Knight
says.
The characters Ben and Gus are complex within the simplicity of
their monotonous lives. Although circumstances rarely appear to
change for the two who are at the bottom class of society, both
characters have a message to communicate.
"These people are trying to find a place for themselves where
they can be happy and secure and safe, but instead they’re not
happy with their lives at all," says Carter, who plays the role of
Ben.
The casualness of the fast-paced dialogue and the seemingly
ordinariness of the conversation between Ben and Gus are the
product of many hours of intense training of learning appropriate
gestures and tones of voice.
The actors had to work out much of the internal motivations in
their minds in order for the desired characteristics to appear at
the right times in the play.
"The difficult thing about this play is that it’s about ordinary
people," Elliott-Knight says. "It’s ordinary dialogue, it’s people
living everyday life together. They’ve been together for years,
working together like a married couple so its about the mundanity
of everyday relationships … but underneath you’ve got something
which is not everyday, you’ve got something extraordinary and that
would be two hitmen."
Even though "The Dumb Waiter" is about assassins, The Bread and
Roses Theatre Company still feels there are some universal lessons
to be extricated from the content of the play.
"At some point you feel you are being manipulated or governed
from above in ways that you can’t necessarily at the time fulfill,"
Gillis says. "(The dumb waiter itself) is like this thing coming in
and out of their lives that should be coming up from down … I
think it sparks something off in really quite a deeply
sub-conscious way in terms of the way power structures are
politically."
More consciously, Pinter and Bread and Roses have something to
say about karma and the issue that Ben and Gus are assassins. By
the end of the play, the atmosphere has gone from monotonous to
fearful.
"They see that if they can kill that easily, then they can be
killed that easily," Carter says. "There’s this thing coming in and
out and that’s impossible to reason with … you’re talking about
the inability, in a way, to plead for your life in a way because
that’s the way it’s going on this particular day which is a very
out of the ordinary day."
THEATER: The Bread and Roses Theatre Company will perform "The
Dumb Waiter" through Nov. 8 at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute,
The Stage Lee, 7936 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica. Tickets are
$15, $10 for students. For more information, call (213)
650-7777.
JAMIE SCANLON-JACOBS/Daily Bruin
Mark Gillis and Susannah Elliott-Knight left the Royal
Shakespeare Company to form the Bread and Roses Theatre
Company.
The Bread and Roses Theater Company
The Bread and Roses Theatre Company will perform "The Dumb
Waiter" at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute.