The Ensemble Theatre have delivered two of playwright Harold Pinter’s one-act plays in an uneasy double-bill serving. I was instantly intrigued by director Mark Kilmurry’s The Lover and The Dumb Waiter, when they were promised to be “claustrophobic”. Really the quaint theatre situated on the harbour was anything but, at night adorned by specks of small lights reflecting endlessly in the water. Yet I’m relieved to declare that within that intimate theatre and amidst feverish anticipation, the three actors delivered on the promise.

To begin with The Lover. An ordinary 1960’s couple talk in the morning while the husband gets dressed for work, a tedious office job. He politely asks his wife if her lover is coming in the afternoon, one who she is openly spending time with in the comfort of their living room. She asserts yes. He agrees to stay back at work. They leave after a quick dispassionate kiss, but something so inexplicably uneasy has remained in the air.

While watching, attempting to decipher the couple’s lifestyle and dialogues as they play out in such a puzzling manner, impossible to define or construe, I really just sat there, thinking, “Oh? Uhh. Hmm.” And at the same time it was so hilarious.

Instantly as they appeared onto the scene - a cozy living room adorned with warm glows of lamps and a record player - the actor’s movements were mesmerising. So precise, so purposeful. The woman moving to fix the music with her high-heeled leg stretched out, the man following her with a hungry gaze, with each wrinkle on his forehead so particular, felt uncomfortable and rigid. In every physicality echoed the private domesticity of married life. The couple effortlessly embodied the bourgeois effort, the stiffness. The kisses were so cumbersome, yet at the same time filled with such camaraderie, as if there was a private joke between them that the audience didn’t share, and was punished for it.

Whenever they argued over their actions it was almost impossible to watch, as watching felt like taking the role of a perverted intruder into the depths of their personal life. The way the couple looked at each other when discussing their respective affairs was filthy, perfect.

Specifically the wife (Nicole Da Silva), embodied such a mystifying artificiality in her voice and movement. In this way she controlled the room and particularly her husband. And then of course the husband (Gareth Davies), appeared so tired and distraught, a man lost in his own jealousy, but at the same time so depraved, culminating in an asinine fantasy that could only develop as a symptom of their tedious domestic life.

It was unclear exactly what was happening in the climax of their perversion, as the playwright and the actors weaved entangled fantasies and desires in a mind bending maze of disintegration, disorder, sexual yearning. But of course this was intended.

“The Lover” is an eccentric reminder that everything in life is a performance. Watching felt dirty. A good dirty, but also more of a cruel one.

Now, onto The Dumb Waiter. Ben and Gus are common people, two hitmen waiting for an assignment. Pinter’s windowless, buried settings exude tightness, a similar claustrophobia corrupting his characters’ mannerisms. Ben and Gus pass time with purposeless small talk, such as a football match or tea, but begin to be terrorised by a dumb waiter (a small elevator between floors for transporting food), from the floor above them placing obscene orders for meals that the hitmen struggle to fulfil.

Contrasted to The Lover, the Ensemble’s rendition of this play was alright. It’s unclear whether this was the fault of the script or the performance, but after The Lover, audience members were shifting in their seats from the drab small talk onstage. This is what unfortunately made the play more an intellectual pleasure than an emotional one, especially upon reflection after a few days have passed. This is not always a flaw; Pinter’s small talk somehow paradoxically reveals the very nature of his characters, especially Ben (Gareth Davies), the seasoned killer, pretending to be collected and decisive, when in reality the dumb waiter’s demands were unravelling his sanity slowly the entire time. This culminated in Pinter’s final comment that the little guy, like always, gets trampled and terrorised, an observation of how the lower classes are exploited, tortured senselessly for entertainment.

Nevertheless I left with a feeling that something was missing, some kind of scene or detail that would have made the ending more satisfying, and less like a watered down Waiting For Godot. Perhaps the initial small talk was too long. But I will say that this one-act has grown on me since, after I have wrapped my head around it.

There was a brilliantly executed, constant, oppressive feeling of the ‘menace’, generated by the imposing dumb waiter and the frustrating, inexplicable situation, Ben and Gus rendered useless in the face of the torment, the dumb waiter’s ridiculing messages. Coupled with the grumbling sounds closing in on the men, it made them into Kafkaesque bugs in the belittling basement.

In all, this double-bill was a cherished night for an enjoyer of absurdist fever dreams of human intricacies and faults, bathing in a claustrophobic atmosphere of Harold Pinter’s meticulously crafted modern hells.

The Lover & The Dumb Waiter is Playing at the Ensemble Theatre until the 7th of June