Two Plays – One Evening - Review

'Something Unspoken' by Tennessee Williams and 'The Dumb Waiter' by Harold Pinter.

The set for Pinter's Dumb Waiter cleverly captured the drabness of the basement room, giving the two well-contrasted performers adequate space to show their increasing frustrations as they awaited further instructions from their unseen superiors. By contrast the opulent setting required in Tennessee Williams’ Something Unspoken was achieved by focusing our attention onto a central area, drawing it completely away from the black curtain cladding concealing the earlier set, enabling the two female actors to competently develop both the spoken and underlying allusions of the text.

I enjoyed both of these very well-staged and thought-provoking productions, although I wondered whether all our audiences appreciated the dark humour and quirkiness of the text as much as I did. Whilst Something Unspoken was a new play for me, The Dumb Waiter is, of course, a hardy annual at festivals of one act plays etc. and one I have seen many times before. This version was one of the best productions I have ever seen.