The Dumb Waiter/Trifles

Unexpected Stage Company, which earned raves for last season’s area premiere of “Candy and Dorothy”–launches its third season this July with two suspenseful one-act plays presented in one entertaining evening. In this two-hour show, audiences will experience Harold Pinter’s edge-of-your-seat drama The Dumb Waiter paired with Susan Glaspell’s seminal murder mystery Trifles. Harold Pinter’s darkly comic short play The Dumb Waiter centers on Gus and Ben, two hit men waiting in an abandoned basement for their next victim. As the building’s dumbwaiter starts to move and the tension between the two men builds, it becomes clear that things are not as they seem. Based on a real-life homicide, Trifles has become one of the best-known American one-act plays thanks to its compelling exploration of power between the sexes.