In the first of 23 scheduled theatrical offerings for the 1996-97 season at Galleria Toledo, Ass. Cult. Beat 72 [sic] presented two Pinter one-act plays. (Beckett, Fleming, Zimet and Duras are the other non-Italian authors featured this season at the most important experimental theater in Naples.)
A striking unit set by Francesco Ghisu had the Controller of "Victoria Station" on an upper level at the left and the Driver with the front of his taxi at the extreme right. In the center was the room, with two single beds and an oversized dumb waiter where Ben and Gus awaited their orders. At the rear was a giant propeller, as enigmatic as Pinter's characters. Lighting by Alberto Trabucco and original music by Davide Mastrogiovanni enhanced the plays performed without intermission. Lively performances from the actors energized The Dumb Waiter (1982), but perhaps because it is difficult to capture Pinter's poetic language in translation, the direction by Pierpaolo Sepe tended toward the hysterical to get the message across. Much of the suggestive and the mysterious in this early Pinter classic got lost in angry exchanges between Ben and Gus.
Evening opener Victoria Station (1957) fared much better; as the taxi dispatcher orders, then pleads, with the driver to pick up a passenger at Victoria Station, dominant and passive roles are reversed. A natural competitiveness gives way to an erotic curiosity in the Controller's dialogue, as he reveals his envy of the Driver's control over the shaft and other active parts of his car. The only woman in these two plays is the mysterious invisible passenger in the back of taxi.
