Play: The Dumb Waiter
Programme texts:
• Markus Isch as Gus
• Adrian A. Baumann as Ben
• Matt Kimmich, Director
• Acknowledgments
Reviews:
Cast
| Ben | Adrian A. Baumann |
|---|---|
| Gus | Markus Isch |
| Directed by | Matt Kimmich |
Markus Isch (Gus)
The idea which brought Ade and me to perform "The Dumb Waiter" goes way back to one of Dick Watts' introductory proseminars of linguistics. It must have been sometime in 1995 on one of those early Friday mornings when we made the acquaintance of pragmatics. On the hand-out was the bit of the play where Ben and Gus argue about whether you can light a kettle or not. That stuck with me all the time until after the closing night of Caryl Churchill's Owners in September last year. Celebrating three successful performances at the Front after the dernière, Ade or me must have mentioned it casually, the other one picked it up, and five minutes after we were determined to do it - whenever. It so happened that, in mutual and mute agreement, we decided he would play Ben and I would play Gus.
Ouch. After recovering from the shock that Gus had the lion's share of the lines in the play, I started to realize that the text was so fragmented and disrupted that I had second thoughts. However, his zeal in trying to carefully organise a theatre event other than the rather short-circuit decision that Owners was, and being an ardent Pinter-fan himself, Simon D. Hicks was instantly up and ready for our project, all the more because it would make a nice contrast to the successful large-scale open-air production of All's Well That Ends Well this summer. And I agreed. Something small. Sure, why not? Some tiny chamber-piece with only two characters sounded like big fun and about one month's work. At that stage, I liked to think of All's Well... as the still floating Titanic (although troubled by medium-sized rains now and then), whereas The Dumb Waiter meant something like the cacophonic two-man band aboard the ship, not really knowing where they were, what they should do - and what instruments they should play.
Being a slow learner by heart, I started to get into character in spring. Gradually, Gus became a kind of stupid brother for me. He was standing beside me at the bus station, stealing my cigarettes, nagging about this and that, but he didn't bother about helping me clean the flat - not once, the bugger. I guess I reached the peak one Sunday morning when I woke up and immediately knew that was the way that Gus would get up. This was one of the rare mornings when I didn't want any coffee for breakfast, believe me.
However, there I was. Trying to solve all the knots in the text and making Gus look like a real person, another problem had to be solved: who would direct the play? I immediately thought about Peter Tarrant who had had his hands on "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "Owners" and "All's Well...", but as he had returned to England in August, the search for another, hidden talent brought me to Matt. He wasn't really too eager at first and had never directed anything so far, but I had the gut-feeling that he was up to it. I've never been further from wrong, really. It was a pleasure to watch what he did to the play, how he saw Gus and Ben, and what the whole play meant to him - in both senses of the word. I trusted him completely, which went as far as agreeing to cut my hair - and that means something, it does.
Rehearsals started - and, as always, chaos ensued. A problem solved meant three more created as a result. Incredible. Unbelievable. At more than one stage of the rehearsals, I felt like crouching into a corner and crying. It was agony, emotionally and timewise, and on that issue, I owe a lot of people a big hug. Playing with guns for four nights a week was enough to bring me to the edge of sanity, really. But then, when I thought we had reached the bottom of clumsiness, things just fell into place. Not yet fit for the stage, but at least we had something we could work with. And it's been the case since then that we increased the quality of the play every time we rehearsed. It wasn't equally good each rehearsal, but we kept a certain standard - I don't know how, and most likely, I'm never going to find out.
Now the agony is pretty much over, and with a little luck it will turn into ecstasy. But of course, that's for you to judge. All I can do is go there and do my best, trying to turn my exhibitionism into something that is worth being watched.
Read the next programme item: Adrian A. Baumann as Ben