Televised Downstage Theatre production of the play by Harold Pinter
Peter Adamson in Pinter play
The Press, 15 March 1973
Last year, Peter Adamson took it into his head to work in New Zealand during his annual six weeks break from Coronation Street. His agent approached the N.Z.B.C.’s television drama department, whose immediate reaction was, Let’s try to make it happen.
The result was The Dumb Waiter — another experiment, another step on the difficult road to maturity in television drama in this country. By no means everybody’s play, Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter has only two characters, and audiences will no doubt, be interested to see New Zealand’s Grant Tilly starring with England’s Peter Adamson.
The Dumb Waiter screens from CHTV3 on April 2.
If one asks Peter Adamson (who likes Pinter), what he thinks Pinter is trying to say in The Dumb Waiter he hesitates. Then: He’s commenting on society, the terrible things we say and do to each other.
He thinks a little more, then goes on. But you can’t define it—it’s a matter of communication, people get it or they don’t.
More thought. Yes, I agree, he does deal in terror.
How did he get away from Coronation Street to come to New Zealand? I’ve a clause in my contract that gives me six weeks off each year. For my first nine years on ‘The Street’ I couldn’t do anything else—and it’s a 100-hour-a-week job.
Not that he’s sick of it; he loves Coronation Street even though it does give him a few problems, not the least of which is the battle against type-casting. Won’t that affect how the public sees him in The Dumb Waiter?
That’s not my problem.
he replies. If they want to identify me with Len Fairclough that’s their problem.
Grant Tilly will be familiar to most television viewers for his role in Pukemanu and to Wellingtonians in particular as one of Downstage’s permanent company. He sees The Dumb Waiter as an illustration of Pinter’s skill in playwriting and in particular his ability to keep a play working on two distinct levels. One is the obvious, everyday one, the second, more important because it has more meaning, is often found on the nonverbal level, possibly in the casual raising of an eyebrow, often in what is not said rather than what is, as in dialogue of more conventional playwrights.
Grant is an all-round man of the theatre. As well as acting in many plays, he is a stage designer of considerable stature. He has further interests in the design field, making silk-screen and batik fabrics and he was the colour consultant for the much admired recent redecoration of the Wellington Town Hall.
PRODUCER
Murray Reece, the producer, is probably best known to viewers as the producer of Miss Julie and of four Pukemanu episodes. Since finishing The Dumb waiter. Murray has been working on a television adaptation of two Chekhov plays and when these are completed he will be off overseas on an Arts Council bursary to study television drama further. He has had a varied life.
Before the joined the N.Z.B.C. as a trainee cameraman, Murray was a postman, did freelance art work, made concrete posts and had many other jobs which, he says, gave him an invaluable insight into people which he could scarcely have gained in any other way.
Pinter’s best play,
is Ross Jennings’ opinion of The Dumb Waiter. Jennings, production assistant, ought to know, as he has had a wealth of experience in the theatre, both here and overseas. He has directed The Dumb Waiter on the English stage, and played Gus in a New Zealand tour of the same play.
Other theatrical credits include a year as artistic director of Wanganui’s professional Four Seasons’ Theatre and more than two years touring with the Children’s Art Theatre around the North Island. Television is not new to him, as he has been on the acting end of the camera in Britain in walk-on parts for Softly, Softly and Please Sir—useful experience for this N.Z.B.C. translation of Pinter’s stage play to the television screen.
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