Seeing the wonderful and provocative debut of "The Dumb Waiter" at Alchemist Theatre  Thursday night was an experience that I was sure would test my love for what has always been a favorite play of mine.

I’ve seen the play perhaps a dozen or more times for a reason I’ll get to later, and I was overjoyed to see this production of this great play by Harold Pinter was as good and as true to the vision as any other I’ve seen.

David Sapiro and Claudio Parrone, Jr., give magnificent performances under the careful and honest direction of Erin Nicole Eggers on a detailed and evocative set designed by Aaron Kopec.

The plot of the play is simple: Gus (Parrone) and Ben (Sapiro) are two hit men waiting in the basement of an abandoned restaurant for their intended victim, scheduled to walk through a door to his own death. Gus and Ben are old hands at this, with Ben being the cool one and Gus the one whose nerves are perpetually on edge.

Pinter was a member of a group of young British playwrights called the "angry young men" because they were disillusioned with the world around them and wrote about their disenchantments. This play was one of his earliest, and it set the tone for much of his work, leaving the play open to interpretation by the audience.

On the surface, "The Dumb Waiter" is a very ordinary play. The dialogue between Ben and Gus, the only two characters in the play, borders on the pedestrian, conversation over grounds that had been trod frequently before.

The play is funny, very funny. But the humor is designed to bring clarity to the differences between Gus and Ben and to profoundly explain the chasm between the two men and the rest of the world.

Gus and Ben resemble nothing so much as an old married couple suffering strains of being hitched too long and showing the explicit signs of aging and deterioration. They are both comfortable and ill at ease with each other. They do what’s expected and what’s surprising.

And, most of all, they become something they think it's what the world wants them to be.

The dumb waiter drops suddenly (and jarringly thanks to sound design by Therese Goode) into their hideout, carrying with it a written order for two braised steaks, two Sago puddings and two teas without sugar. The dumb waiter rises and drops, again and again, each time with a new order for some well-cooked dish.

Ben and Gus begin to panic, unable to grasp that they are not going to be able to fill these orders and wondering what the guests upstairs will think.

This is hilarity at its best. But they're smart laughs. There aren’t sight gags here. The funny is intelligent funny and demands attention from the audience.

Parrone and Sapiro bring vivid skills to these two characters.

Sapiro is calm and experienced. He is the veteran for whom this is just another day, just another job. He is an actor of quiet substance who creates a memorable and somewhat creepy character. Meanwhile, Parrone is all power, movement and nerves. His hands are constantly in motion, either performing tasks or rubbing fingers against thumbs in a gesture that suggests nothing as much as the fact that this guy needs to take some meds.

Eggers guided these two actors through the complexities of a Pinter play, complete with lengthy periods without anything being spoken. Pinter put these pauses in his script and using them as wisely as Eggers does in this production makes the whole thing even more moving and powerful than you’d expect.

I said that this play was deeply personal for me, and there is a reason that I’ve seen it so often.

In the summer of 1958, famed director Alan Schneider was an Artist in Residence at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He was going to direct two plays during the summer at the old Fred Miller Theater on Oakland Avenue, where the Milwaukee Rep was born.

"The Dumb Waiter" was one; the other was "The Chairs" by Eugene Ionesco. Both were two-character plays, and my mother played the role of the old woman in "Chairs." "Waiter" had never been performed, having been written only the year before, but Schneider had a relationship with Pinter.

I was in the summer before I started high school and went to the theater to see the first run-through of Pinter’s play. I sat in the back row, and just before the play started, I looked to the right and saw a man at the other end. We did a classic double take, and he walked toward me. We were both tall with dark hair and dark glasses.

"We look alike," he said, holding out his hand. I stood and shook his hand.

"I’m Harold Pinter," he said. "I’m David Begel," I replied, having little or no knowledge who I was talking to. "Can I join you," he asked as he sat down. I didn’t say another word.

But I sat next to him as he watched his new work unfold, taking notes on a plain pad of white paper. When it was over, he just nodded at me and left.

It is only looking back that I realize how intimate a moment that was for me with a genius.

Thankfully, that man's genius gets a wonderful treatment with the utmost respect at Alchemist.

 "The Dumb Waiter" runs through April 23 and information on tickets and showtimes is available here. 

Production credits: Director: Erin Nicole Eggers, Set/Lighting/Graphic Design, Aaron Kopec;Sound Design, Therese Goode.