Keeping with his mission to stage lesser known works by famous playwrights, artistic director of Greenwich Theatre James Haddrell is staging Harold Pinter’s A Slight Ache, with the playwright’s far better known The Dumb Waiter running after it as a companion piece.
Stage regular Jude Akuwudike (the National Theatre’s Three Sisters) and Tony Mooney (Scott and Bailey, Tournament) are starring opposite one another in The Dumb Waiter, which follows hitmen Ben (Tony) and Gus (Jude) as they sit tight in a basement awaiting instructions for their next job, while receiving strange messages via a dumb waiter.
Kerrie Taylor (Hollyoaks, The Bay), who starred in Greenwich Theatre’s Caryl Churchill shorts Bad Nights and Odd Days, is joining Jude and Tony for A Slight Ache, which follows the fallout after married couple Flora (Kerrie) and Edward (Jude) invite a silent Matchseller (Tony) into their home.
Both darkly funny one-act plays were written in the late 1950s, and both make subtle points about power and the roles we assume in society. Each of the plays is also armed with a shocking ending, likely to keep audiences reflecting on and talking about what they saw long after the curtain comes down, but while The Dumb Waiter has been revived frequently in the intervening decades, A Slight Ache is rarely staged.
“I hope audiences go away thinking ‘why is [The Dumb Waiter] the famous one and [A Slight Ache] isn’t,” reflects director James Haddrell, when I catch up with him and the cast two weeks into the rehearsal period. “They are both so impactful at the end, it’s really interesting to think why one has run away and one hasn’t.”
James understandably wants to keep the endings a surprise for those unfamiliar with the plays. So instead, I ask him why two Pinter shorts were his latest choice of programming for the theatre. “We’ve settled into a routine of trying to identify early and lesser known pieces [by major playwrights],” he says, referencing the theatre’s recent productions of works by three of the greatest living playwrights: Caryl Churchill, Michael Frayne and Steven Berkoff.
While The Dumb Waiter doesn’t fall into the “lesser known” category, James wanted something that would complement A Slight Ache while feeling very different. “But actually, there’s a lot that crosses over between them,” he muses, explaining both are about “digging into people’s insecurities and how those are manifested.”
Jude, who was new to both plays when rehearsals started, believes “these two plays are really about Britain and its structures; the power and the people inside it.” Even though they were written in the 1950s, he says, their themes are still present now. “Even in The Dumb Waiter, you can find little lessons about unions and the army,” he laughs.
For Tony, performing in The Dumb Waiter is something of a throwback. “I did The Dumb Waiter playing the same character [Ben] 20 years ago and I don’t look any different!,” he laughs. He was starring opposite Will Ash at the time, who he describes as “an Emmerdale heartthrob and silver fox”.
“I spoke to Will a couple of weeks ago and told him I was doing this and he said ‘I think you’ll find more in it than we did 20 years ago’,” he chuckles, admitting that rehearsals for James’s production with Jude have already proven this to be the case. “Pinter is put on a lot, but there’s still lots to find in his plays that might not have been found in previous productions,” he says.
Kerrie, who can’t even understudy for The Dumb Waiter because, shockingly, the Pinter Estate will not allow female actors to perform in the play, says “coming to Greenwich Theatre is really good for me. I worked with James before [on Bad Nights and Odd Days] and it’s really nice to work somewhere that does invest in these great names [and investigate] their other works… the things we haven’t seen.”
While the plays aren’t normally staged together, Tony is confident viewers will be able to join the dots. “If we pull it off and it goes well, as an audience member I think you’ll make the connection between the two pieces. They deal with similar things in a different way,” he reasons, adding that both plays leave the viewer with a lot of questions.
“Maybe one is about declining power, and the other is about power in operation and what we do about it,” adds Jude. “Because they are portraits of England, they might be painful viewing.”
“The power is not related to what’s happening [in the plot],” chimes in Kerrie. “In A Slight Ache, there’s a lot around traditions and forms and manners, and everything that’s really happening is happening underneath all of that. It’s quite interesting to see how we use form, tradition and manners to stabilise ourselves.”
With shades of both light and dark in the works, it can be tricky to predict how audiences will respond to either play, but as long as they inspire further discussion, Kerrie is happy. “I hope I walk into the pub two doors up from the theatre and hear lots of lively conversation [about the plays],” she says.
For Jude and Tony, this double bill means rehearsing two plays and two very different characters at once. “It’s a challenge, but hopefully and confidently, we’ll get there,” laughs Jude. “Often short plays don’t get a chance. It’s like they had their moment in the 1970s. It’s great James is [committed to staging them]. They deserve their place on stage and I don’t think everyone is brave enough to do that.”
The Dumb Waiter and A Slight Ache are showing at Greenwich Theatre, Crooms Hill, London SE10 8ES.
May 12 – 3 June, 7:30pm – 9:30pm.
Admission: £20 – £27.
www.greenwichtheatre.org.uk/events/the-dumb-waiter-a-slight-ache/
