Pinter's writing in The Dumb Waiter combines "the staccato rhythms of music-hall cross-talk and the urban thriller".[1] The dialogue between Ben and Gus, while seemingly concerned only with trivial newspaper stories, football matches and cups of tea, reveals their characters. In Pinter's early plays, "it is language that betrays the villains – more pat, more cliché-ridden, with more brute power than that of their victims".[2]
In the theatre, the emotional power of the play is more readily felt than understood. Pinter "created his own theatrical grammar – he didn't merely write characters that had an emotional response to something... But instead, through his characters' interactions and phrasings, Pinter seemed to conjure the very visceral emotion itself".[3]
