Copyright Boston Herald Library Apr 11, 2001. Review by Robert Nesti. Printed with permission.

"The Dumb Waiter," presented by the Boiler Company, at the Threshold Theatre, Boston, through April 21. Harold Pinter's "The Dumb Waiter" has an air of familiarity - not due to productions of this early one-act play (which is rarely performed) but because of its influence on many contemporary plays and films.

Virtually the entire new wave of British gangster films, best represented by the work of Guy Ritchie, has a connection to this brief 1957 play that is being quite strikingly presented by the Boiler Company in the postage-stamp confines of the Threshold Theatre through April 21.

Plays by Sam Shepard and David Mamet, and even Adam Rapp's new comedy "Animals and Plants," currently at the American Repertory Theatre, have roots in this play.

In Pinter's comedy, a pair of low-level hit men sit in a basement hotel room waiting for their next assignment. Gus, the senior member of the duo, sits and reads a newspaper, reciting aloud any number of absurd items that he finds interesting. Ben nervously paces the room, incessantly complaining about a variety of topics, including being haunted by the vision of their last murder victim, a young woman. Their wait is disrupted by a noisy dumbwaiter, which sits prominently on the back wall and drops off mysterious food orders ("two braised steak and chips") that leave them flustered and paranoid. Who is sending them this food? And who will be the victim of their next hit?

The clues, it turns out, are numerous in this spare, unsettling play that, at 45 minutes, might seem a bit too brief for an evening's entertainment. (The play is usually paired with another one-act.) Still, you have to admire the Boiler Company, which made a promising local debut last summer with a pair of one-acts by Shepard, for their care and rigorous dedication to supplying serious contemporary theater to Boston audiences. This focused production, under the direction of John Robert Macy III, shows a clear understanding of Pinter's comedy of menace.

His actors capture the play's eerie mood perfectly. As Ben, Matthew Thomas Kraus is all nervous intensity, boyish and obviously ill-fitted for his job. Richard John Roode is perfectly hard-edged as Gus, the no-nonsense hood who has little patience for his partner's complaints. The two convey the play's subtext wonderfully well.