Jacket description.back: In all of Pinter's plays, seemingly ordinary
events become charged with profound, if elusive, meaning, haunting
pathos, and wild comedy. In The Caretaker, a tramp finds lodging in the
derelict house of two brothers; in The Dumbwaiter, a pair of gunmen wait
for the kill in a decayed lodging house. Harold Pinter gradually exposes
the inner strains and fear of his characters, alternating hilarity and
character to create and almost unbearable edge of tension.