THE WAITING GAME
THE STARS OF HAROLD PINTER’S THE DUMB WAITER TELL JOHN NATHAN ABOUT REVIVING A CLASSIC
YOU’VE got two people in a basement room, waiting for something. That’s the play,’ says Shane Zaza. The Happy Valley and Black Mirror actor is sitting on his sofa in Crystal Palace talking about Harold Pinter’s tense two-hander The Dumb Waiter, in which Shane plays one of two hitmen who are killing time before their next murder.
‘Someone said it’s a cross between Tarantino and Tony Hancock,’ adds Eullenia star Alec Newman from his home in Surrey. We are talking on Zoom, of course, and as may also be obvious, the two actors are not rehearsing today.
‘We were supposed to open the show tomorrow,’ explains Shane.
‘We’re at home because our opening was pushed back by the global pandemic,’ adds Alec with his dry, deadpan, Glaswegian delivery, which has been undiminished by living in the home counties.
Covid has been toxic to every planned live performance in the land. Yet despite the delay it caused to this one, Alec and Shane are leading theatre’s fightback with a revival, directed by Alice Hamilton at Hampstead Theatre, which marks the 60th anniversary of its first UK performance at the same venue.
‘I see it as a gift,’ says Alec, who like all busy actors saw his work diary cancelled when the first lockdown hit. ‘I asked my agent if I should write off the whole year. She said, “probably.” Two days later she said I’m in The Dumb Waiter. I thought she was joking.’
‘It’s a responsibility to do theatre when theatre is dead,’ says Shane.
‘It felt like I had to do it. We have to represent all actors working in theatre. I want to have a part in making theatre happen.’
He was as surprised as Alec to get the call, though for different reasons.
‘Pinter is probably my favourite playwright, but I never thought I’d ever do a play by him. I just never saw anyone who looks like me — anyone of colour — do a Pinter.’
True, the last couple of years have seen Pinter productions with black or Asian actors, Shane acknowledges. But not many, if any, before then. ‘When I was young I never had a brown David Copperfield [such as Dev Patel in Armando Iannucci’s recent film] to aspire to,’ says 35-year-old Shane. ‘I just had Andi Peters on TV.’
The Dumb Waiter has become one of the most popular Pinter plays in recent times, not least because the short, powerful work tends to attract A-listers.
Martin Freeman and Danny Dyer did it in 2019, while Lee Evans and Jason Isaacs were the stars in 2007.
The work is a tense, claustrophobic piece in which the coiled Ben (played in this latest production by Alec) and the jittery Gus await orders to kill their next victim.
‘Being stuck in a house or a room and waiting for a message from above really resonates during lockdown,’ says Shane, his plush sofa almost cuddling him.
‘Shane, your living room is lovely,’ says Alec, admiringly. ‘I’m just in a nice section,’ replies Shane, modestly.
Though the two have never worked together before, they have much in common. Both spent their formative acting years at the National Youth Theatre, neither has performed Pinter before and each became fathers last year in the same week. And they agree that the play that has brought them together is as funny as it is disturbing.
Typically for Pinter, much is left to the audience’s imagination about the two characters’ past.
‘We learn that they do this quite often; that there is a specific routine, and that the last time it went badly wrong,’ says Alec.
Yet there is something of a comedy double act about the characters. ‘There was that video you showed, me,’ prompts Alec. ‘Yes I looked at some Abbott and Costello,’ says Shane. ‘It’s a sketch where the comedians misunderstand each other, which almost exemplifies what happens in the play. It’s just brilliant.’
However, away from comedy, each of the actors have very different sources of inspiration.
‘I’ve always loved Kenneth Branagh,’ says Alec. ‘And whenever I see Mark Rylance he’s just blindingly brilliant in a way that no one else is.’
Derek Jacobi is also on Alec’s list of heroes. In the Donmar Theatre’s 2010 production of King Lear, Alec played wicked Edmund alongside Jacobi’s Lear.
‘We went to New
York with it, and when
I did the “Thou, nature, art my goddess...” soliloquy, I got a round of applause, which was the only time that has happened to me at the end of a speech.
‘I had to exit as Derek came on and just as I got to the edge of the stage he leant over to my ear and said “You’re fired”, then carried on playing Lear. It blew me away.’ ‘For me, it’s Ben Whishaw,’ says Shane, who appeared with the James Bond star in Philip Ridley’s frightening, future-set dystopian play Mercury Fur, in which torture is a form of entertainment.
‘I love watching Ben and that is one of the productions I’ve been in that I would have loved to have seen as a member of the audience.’
It must have been one of the most disturbing plays he has been in.
‘It was a scary show,’ remembers Shane. ‘You didn’t actually see violence but some people just couldn’t handle it. There were lots of walkouts because you really don’t know what’s going to happen next. A bit like Pinter.’
The Dumb Waiter is at the Hampstead Theatre from December 3 until January 16, 2021, hampsteadtheatre.com
‘Being stuck in a house or room waiting for a message resonates with lockdown’