A thought-provoking double - By Emily Pearce - Thursday, May 14, 2009  

TENSION and menace were the order of the day at REDtie Theatre’s latest Quay Arts show, a double bill comprising Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter and Shelagh Stephenson’s Five Kinds of Silence.

Directed by Marylyn Ford and starring Steve Reading and Colin Ford, The Dumb Waiter follows two hit-men, the jaded Ben and his younger partner, Gus, as they wait in a dingy room for their next job, without even a cup of tea.

As the time passes with no word from their boss, and mysterious food orders continue to arrive from a dumb waiter at the back of the room, the sense of agitation and repressed violence grows and grows.

Both actors were excellent, successfully conveying the play’s sense of unease and delivering the blackly comic script with flair.

The second play, Five Kinds of Silence, dealt with a different kind of menace altogether, that of domestic violence.

Directed by 18-year-old Joseph Plumb, this harrowing and intense production saw Rod Jones star as Billy, a twisted, terrifying character full of rage and bile. He thrives on the fear of his abused wife, played by Maggie Cardew, and damaged adult daughters, played by Helen Reading and Terrie Burland, making this a difficult play to watch.

The cast were superb, offering a devastating glimpse into the complex nature of domestic abuse. The play is about terror and suffering, certainly, but it is also about embarrassment, shame and secrecy.

REDtie has a reputation for tackling challenging, issue-based plays and this production had a serious point to make about domestic abuse — the title refers to the silence of the four family members but also to that of the outside world.