No Man’s Land
Playwright: Harold Pinter Director: Sean Mathias
Wyndham’s, London WC2 (0844-482 5120) Until 17 December Running time: 2hrs (including interval)
The original 1975 production of Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land, with Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, is still raved about by those who were lucky enough to see it, said Ian Shuttleworth in the FT. And although I cannot count myself among their number, I was fortunate enough to see Harold Pinter himself starring opposite Paul Eddington in the 1992 version of the play. That production, too, was a No Man’s Land “to tell your grandchildren about”. And this masterly revival starring another very grand pairing – Ian Mckellen and Patrick Stewart – is “virtually its equal”.
It certainly feels like a theatrical “landmark”, agreed Ann Treneman in The Times. The play is the story of a chance reunion between two men. Mckellen plays Spooner, a failed poet in a crumpled suit, “just one step away from seediness”. Stewart is Hirst, the great man of letters; bald, besuited and “quite possibly gaga”. The pair have met at a Hampstead pub – or was it cruising on the heath? – and Hirst has invited Spooner back to his “beaut” of a mansion for a marathon booze-up. The resulting interaction (interrupted only by Hirst’s two servants, or henchmen, Briggs and Foster) is both “desolate and funny”, said Michael Billington in The Guardian. It is “up to every spectator” to decide for themselves what this “enigmatic” play is ultimately about. But what shines through in this “exquisite” production is the “never-ending contrast between the exuberance of memory and the imminence of extinction”.
It implies no disrespect to the brilliant Stewart to say I found Mckellen the “peerless presence” here, said Matt Wolf in The New York Times. “Clutching at his cap like a security blanket, Mckellen is in supreme physical and rhetorical command of a wonderfully mercurial part.” If you already like Pinter, you will love this show, said Christopher Hart in The Sunday Times. And “if you’ve never quite seen the point of him”, this cracking production might just persuade you. “Either way, you’re sure to be delighted by the sheer acting mastery of two of our leading theatrical knights on superlative form.”