Sydney Reviews

T
he Pinter patter of briny beat and shiny feat of sheer theatrical flair is in full glorious swing in Mark Kilmurry’s double bill production of The Lover and The Dumb Waiter.

What’s not to love about Simone Romaniuk’s swinging Sixties décor of Sarah and Richard’s pad complete with Daryl Wallis’ bongo laden louche lounge soundscape and Matt Cox’ mood lighting in The Lover?

The love affair continues with Sarah’s entrance, Nicole Da Silva in feline ease, fragrance atomising focus, a Pinter pause in perfect poise.

Enter Richard, cookie cutter conservative corporate type, Gareth Davies, neat as a pin, casually pricking the conventional “off to work I go” chit chat with unperturbed piquancy.

And so the facade of a conventional marriage crumbles as Richard and Sarah explore unconventional means to reignite their relationship, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy.

After interval, Davies returns to the stage as Ben alongside Anthony Taufa as Gus in The Dumb Waiter. The cosy domestic set has been replaced with a brutal grey bunker, two uncomfortable looking beds with discomforting blankets divided by a dumb waiter.

Ben and Gus are awaiting instructions on a job they have been assigned. In the parlance of gangsters and government agents it’s a wet job, an assassination, and employment they have executed before, on several occasions.

Ben exudes calm, casually reclined on his bed reading a newspaper. Gus is full of agitation and Taufa does a terrific bit of business to illustrate and emphasise his unrest.

Games are mentioned in both plays. The Lover is the actual playing of games, The Dumb Waiter talks about the game. What game are you playing? What game are they playing? Absurd word play, the demotic become demonic, a comedy of menace.

The author’s miraculous ear for the colloquial and its eccentricities are crisply executed in this fine production. Pinter’s province is word play that plays on our nerves, creating a sequence of unease, and Kilmurry and his cast and crew have the nerve and the wit to pull it off.