The Wick Theatre Company has on offer two comedies for the price of one. How contrasting they prove to be.

The Dumb Waiter is an early work by Harold Pinter, dating from 1960. It is a dark tale of two men, Ben and Gus, holed up in a basement hotel room and waiting not for Godot but for Wilson, another mysterious person who fails to materialise.

They are there to do a job or rather to carry out an assignment for it transpires they are hired killers awaiting instructions about their target.

Ben is clearly the senior partner - laid-back and content to wait - while Gus, the dumber of the two, is agitated and restless, filling in the time with inane chatter.

The dialogue is typical Pinter with nearly every utterance being repeated by the other person and questioned.

Their waiting is punctuated by the bizarre comings and goings of the hotel's dumb waiter with its requests for food orders. It was this part of the play which provided the most humour.

Despite excellent performances by Mark Best and Ryan Lainchbury, the piece raises more questions than it answers and leaves much of the audience bewildered.

Much more to the taste of the audience is the second play - Anorak Of Fire - a gloriously funny monologue about train spotting.

What would appear to be a deadly boring subject turns out to be a joyous piece thanks to the inventive mind of its creator, Stephen Dinsdale.

A second Gus of the evening appears. One Gus Gasgoine faces the audience and addresses them on the subject which has been his obsession since he first heard a train while still in his pram.

This obsession has been so strong, he admits, it caused him to bunk off from kindergarten.

He recounts the rapture that he found on his first visit to Crewe at the age of seven. Crewe, he explains, is to train-spotters as Monte Carlo is to James Bond.

The highlight of the evening is the recounting of his only sexual encounter, with a girl from Boots named Jacky, a hilarious piece of writing.

Dressed in the traditional spotters' costume of trainers, woolly hat and an anorak festooned with badges, John Griffiths gives a superlative performance.

He manages to portray Gus not only as a naive buffoon but also to endow him with a form of dignity that his passion bestows.