Word: pinter
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...left a performance of Peter Shaffer's Royal Hunt of the Sun, I tried to recall the last drama of such stature to come from a British pen. Anything on Pinter, Osborne, Fry, Eliot? No. Then I realized that Royal Hunt is the finest British play since Shaws Saint Joan burst on the boards four decades...
...ROOM and A SLIGHT ACHE. Harold Pinter's opaque one-acters are skilled finger exercises on the theme of dread...
...modern plays depend on banter between the on sustain the interest -- and Pinter is writing such dialogue. a play depends solely burlesque interchanges, some boring -- and even like Waiting for to drag in the second the amusement of this to wane. All of however, contain element of suspense, sheer terror which attention even when actual action is at a standstill...
...Lype O'Dell, is a perfect buffoon throughout the play. Ben(David Meneghel) is more the prototype of the cool, calm professional killer, but he eventually is caught up in volatile arguments with Gus about absolutely trivial subjects. If The Dumb Waiter were only a funny play, if Pinter were capable of nothing more than writing funny dialogue, one could scarcely have found fault with O'dell's or Meneghel's performances, or with Chapman's direction...
...dialogues are so overplayed that one can almost forget that these two men are professional killers. Ben's and Gus's response to the messages from the dumb waiter is so funny that one forgets that these strange messages are baffling and terrifying. And without this sense of terror, Pinter loses much of his uniqueness among modern dramatists...