Audiences will be able to get into the minds of two hit men waiting for their next assignment when The Tragically Comic Players presents Harold Pinter’s comedy of menace, The Dumb Waiter.
The show runs at the Elks Hall in Vernon June 24 and 25 and stars Jason Mynett, last seen in the production of Art at the Elks, as well as Phillip Wagner, artistic director of the Tragically Comic Players, with production design by Amy Wagner.
Mynett and Wagner play hit men who are ostensibly not too bright, but they deal with the absurd mystery that presents itself in their waiting room, with an arduous struggle of profound intensity.
“The resulting comedy is subtle and menacing,” said Wagner, who last staged a musical theatre performance during Vernon Winter Carnival, and is based out of Lumby.
The Dumb Waiter is one of many plays penned by Pinter, who in 2005, won the highest honour available to any writer in the world, the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Horace Engdahl, chairman of the Swedish Academy, said that Pinter was an artist “who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression’s closed rooms.”
Pinter himself wrote: “There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.
“I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?”
Audiences will be able to ask themselves those very questions when The Dumb Waiter takes the stage for three performances, Friday, June 24 at 8 p.m., and Saturday, June 25 at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., at the Elks Hall, 3103-30th St. in Vernon. Tickets are $15 and will be available at the door and The Bean Scene.
For more information or reservations, call 250-547-6045.
