Gus leaves the room to get a drink of water in the bathroom, and the dumbwaiter's speaking tube whistles (a sign that there is a person on the other end who wishes to communicate).

It could also refer to Gus, who fails to realise that he is waiting to be the victim, or even to Ben, whose obedience to a higher authority eventually forces him to eliminate his partner.

[1] The dialogue between Ben and Gus, while seemingly concerned only with trivial newspaper stories, football matches and cups of tea, reveals their characters.

[3] Although the play is realistic in many ways, particularly the dialogue between Ben and Gus, there are also elements that are unexplained and seemingly absurd, particularly the messages delivered by the dumb waiter itself, and the delivery of an envelope containing twelve matchsticks.

"The Dumb Waiter.... achieves, through its unique blend of absurdity, farce, and surface realism, a profoundly moving statement about the modern human condition".

Ben and Gus are both victims of some unseen authority and a surrogate married couple quarrelling, testing, talking past each other and raking over old times".

"The eventual split between Ben and Gus is foreshadowed in the very first joke.... By the end of the play, Pinter has trained us to see that the content of the joke-exchange is meaningless: what is important is the structure, and the alliances and antagonisms it reveals.

[7] Jamie Glover wrote that "The Dumb Waiter is Pinter distilled – the very essence of a writer who tapped into our desire to seek out meaning, confront injustice and assert our individuality.

[8] At Malibu Junior High School sometime in 1979 Emilio Estevez staged this one-act play with young friend and fellow classmate Jeff Lucas.

The first performance in London was in January 1960, as part of a double bill with Pinter's first play The Room, at the Hampstead Theatre Club, directed by James Roose-Evans, with Nicholas Selby as Ben and George Tovey as Gus.

In 2020 a 60th anniversary revival at the Hampstead Theatre, directed by Alice Hamilton with Alec Newman as Ben and Shane Zaza as Gus, had an extended run in a COVID secure setting with the audience masked and socially distanced.

In 2004 The Oxford Playhouse presented The Dumb Waiter and Other Pieces by Harold Pinter, directed by Douglas Hodge with Jason Watkins as Ben and Toby Jones as Gus.

In 2012 a young Mark Pallister took on the role of Gus as original cast member the now Famous Lee Evans was unavailable due to his touring schedule.