Suppose I were to tell you about a one-hour play in which two homebound — make that basement-bound — colleagues await word from their boss. To while away the time, they talk and argue. For added claustrophobic effect, consider that it’s a windowless basement.

You’d probably shrug and flip to the album reviews or Small Bites, or maybe read the truth about alcohol on the Drinks page.

But “The Dumb Waiter,” in the first weekend of its two-weekend run at Volcanic Theatre Pub in Bend (see “If you go”), is a dark comedy about two hitmen killing time while they await their next kill order. That’s a pair of professionals worth spying on.

Derek Sitter stars as Ben, partner to Nathan Woodworth’s Gus. The energetic Sitter is also directing, and, by the way, he’s the proprietor of Volcanic Theatre Pub.

Ben is the cool-headed leader of the twosome, or at least he is at first, as he sits and patiently reads his newspaper.

Almost from the word go, though, there is something menacing in the air. Gus storms in, rifles around his bag, draws his weapon and otherwise conducts himself like I do when I can’t find my car keys.

It’s not car keys he’s looking for, though. All we know is what playwright Harold Pinter intended: Gus is clearly paranoid, or legitimately worried about some threat. Or maybe both.

Either way, the audience is all in. Even more fun is the way Gus makes use of Volcanic Theatre Pub’s space as he moves about what are supposed to be other parts of the basement. That’s a pretty big basement, though maybe not big enough for the two of them.

Ben would be content to read his newspaper and offer highlights, but the agitated Gus won’t hear it. I lost count how many times he said “Hey, Ben,” as he disturbed Ben’s reading with still more questions. Some of them are good questions he should be asking. You get the sense maybe he should have asked other questions a little sooner in his life. Asking now just gets Ben more riled up than informative.

The tense air is lightened when an unknown entity above them begins ordering food via a dumbwaiter, and though they’re ill-equipped to feed anyone anything other than bullets, the two attempt to oblige using their meager food supply.

Then again, following orders is what they do for a living. For a fun exercise, think about the single word “dumbwaiter” and compare it to the play’s three-word title and the other meanings of “dumb” and “waiter.”

The play debuted in 1957, marking “one of the first times in theater … where behavior is telling the story rather than dialogue,” Sitter said. “It’s an actor’s dream. When (I) see that parenthetical (in the script) that says ‘pause,’ I start licking my chops.”

“The Dumb Waiter” was an early play by Nobel-winning British playwright Harold Pinter, who knew a thing or two about writing dialogue and ratcheting up tension. Pinter was the author of 29 plays including “The Room” (no, not the 2003 Tommy Wiseau vanity film), “The Birthday Party” and “Betrayal,” as well as screenplays for “The Last Tycoon,” “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” and “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

During the late 1950s, one critic labeled Pinter’s work — and that of some of his fellow dramatists — “comedy of menace.” For his part, Pinter famously referred to his plays as being about “the weasel under the cocktail cabinet,” a statement he came to regret, according to the British newspaper The Guardian.

Before a rehearsal last week, Sitter told an anecdote from another of Pinter’s comedy-of-menace era plays, “The Caretaker.”

“Critics love to find theme behind every piece of theater,” he said. “There was this one particular conversation with a critic who said, ‘I’m seeing the two men as disciples and the caretaker as a Jesus figure, and it’s really about Christianity versus atheism,’ and Harold Pinter just laughed and he goes, ‘No, it’s about two guys and a caretaker.’”

Sitter, whose past productions include Edward Albee’s “The Zoo Story” and Joe Mantello’s adaptation of “The Santaland Diaries” by David Sedaris, said “The Dumb Waiter” is “easily the least heavily themed play” he has done in Bend.

“If I had to make a theme, I would say certainly it’s about power and the chain of command and that the underclassmen are always the victim. I could say that,” he said. “But what I’m going to say to you is that it’s (about) two men in a basement waiting for their kill instructions.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0349, djasper@bendbulletin.com