{"id":1218,"date":"2016-09-21T14:54:41","date_gmt":"2016-09-21T14:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/?p=1218"},"modified":"2016-09-25T11:14:47","modified_gmt":"2016-09-25T11:14:47","slug":"as-it-is-pinters-at-his-best-in-no-mans-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/2016\/09\/as-it-is-pinters-at-his-best-in-no-mans-land.html","title":{"rendered":"As it is? Pinter\u2019s at his best in No Man\u2019s Land"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Sir<\/a>

Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Patrick Steward in the Hampstead Drawing Room. Photo credit Johann Persson<\/p><\/div>\n

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If you\u2019ve ever doubted that Harold Pinter deserved his 2005 Nobel Prize, take yourself to see Sean Mathias\u2019 production of No Man\u2019s Land<\/em> with the duo of theatrical knights, Sir Ian McKellen (as Spooner) and Sir Patrick Stewart (as Hirst) at Wyndham\u2019s Theatre. Forty-one years ago, at the same venue, another pair of knights, Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, starred in Peter Hall\u2019s original production of this, Pinter\u2019s most poetic play; and I remember Michael Gambon as Hirst in 2008, directed by Rupert Goold, then our most promising young director.<\/p>\n

In 1975 the play was an utter mystery, at least to me. I missed the cricketing allusions in the names of the four characters \u2013 though now that I know them (thanks to a marvellously detailed and imaginative programme), I can\u2019t really see their relevance, except to the cricket-obsessed playwright playing a pleasurable, not too important game with his audience. At the time, I remember thinking that No Man\u2019s Land<\/em> was a Beckettian parable about old age, and the beautiful Hampstead drawing room actually the ominous ante-room to the grave.\u00a0 Though it\u2019s been a long time since I saw the original Richardson-Gielgud production, I don\u2019t remember the play being as funny as the current production, or its enigmas as (relatively) easy to follow.<\/p>\n

Pinter was very big on what he called donn\u00e9es<\/em>, facts or notions he could seize on, which gave him a starting point. The donn\u00e9es<\/em> of No Man\u2019s Land<\/em> seem to be (but, of course, may very well not be) that on Hampstead Heath, Hirst, an elegantly dressed, successful man of letters, picks up Spooner, a slightly seedy, Michael Foot lookalike, failed poet, who works as a pot-boy in a Chalk Farm pub. He is wearing ratty tennis shoes, a tatty suit, carries a dirty-looking mac, and sports a corduroy cap, a CND badge (I think \u2013 even from my wonderful seat in row F I couldn\u2019t quite make it out) and has tied the back of his wispy grey hair into the too-optimistic beginnings of a ponytail.<\/p>\n

Hirst takes Spooner back to his multi-million pound Hampstead house, and pours him a whisky, asking \u201cAs it is?\u201d And, indeed, Spooner takes it \u2013 and most of the rest of the bottle \u2013 neat. \u201cAs it is\u201d was Pinter\u2019s verbal donn\u00e9e <\/em>for this play, and is, I suppose, its theme \u2013 taking life as it is, a series of things that happens to each of us before our inevitable deaths.\u00a0 Even Stephen Brimson Lewis\u2019s magnificent set, a curving, coffered wood-panelled room with a single floor-to-ceiling window, furnished only with a Chinoiserie sideboard in front of some shelves, a comfortable upholstered armchair, two side tables and two William IV chairs, hints that it\u2019s the waiting-room for death: at each side you can just see the skeleton, the naked plaster-and-lath on which the panelling rests. Equal attention has been paid to Brimson Lewis\u2019s costumes: I recognised the 1970s Blades-like suits, made by Rupert Lycett-Green, and the Deborah Clare-type shirt worn by Foster, because I owned both myself.<\/p>\n

In the first half it seems to be clear that Spooner and Hirst have not met before this encounter on the Heath near Jack Straw\u2019s Castle. Both are far too old to be there for the normal reason of seeking gay sex \u2013 which yields a few amusing lines of dialogue. At Hirst\u2019s house they begin drinking. Hirst seems to finish a bottle of vodka, before asking Spooner to pour him a whisky from the bottle he\u2019s clutching along with his mac and own glass. The two of them get through an astonishing amount of whisky, before Spooner finds and hits another bottle in the sideboard. Hirst collapses on all fours, and leaves the room. If there were a drama prize for bladder control, the two of them would certainly share it.<\/p>\n

Enter at this point a fit young man, with shiny Beatles hair and sideboards down to his shapely jaws: Forster (Damien Molony), dressed in lovingly chosen, upmarket Carnaby Street gear, and speaking in a distinctly non-Hampstead London accent. He\u2019s in turn menacing and fey, demanding to know who Spooner is and what he\u2019s doing there. Foster says he works and lives in the Hampstead house, and then introduces Briggs (Owen Teale), a shaggily bearded bit of rough. Briggs has tattoos on his hands\u2013 isn\u2019t this slightly anachronistic, I wondered? Aren\u2019t \u201clove\/hate\u201d knuckle tattoos from a later era?<\/p>\n

Briggs and Foster are very physical with each other, perhaps pointing the way to the slight whiff of homoeroticism between Spooner and Hirst in the second half, when they suddenly appear to share a common past \u2013 Oxford, London clubs, weddings, cricket matches, picnics on the lawn and other social events. Or are they playing a new game, where Hirst claims to have cuckolded Spooner, and Spooner outrages Hirst by insisting that he was regularly fellated by a respectable female friend of Hirst? Is it a power struggle? Hirst seems to have all the cards in his hand, but then he seems to lose the advantage to Spooner\u2019s imaginative narration of what would have seemed sexual perversion in their 1930s youth. \u00a0This scene is one of McKellen\u2019s triumphs, as his facial expressions during Stewart\u2019s boastful, wounding tirade, vary from alarmed to sceptical, but without ever deciding the issue of whether what Hirst is claiming is history or fantasy. Every once in a while, there\u2019s a wonderful, strange sound effect (by Adam Cork), but these only ratchet up the atmosphere, and don\u2019t tip the balance in favour of fact or fancy.<\/p>\n

Pinter has written the piece so that each of the actors has monologues, but the silent reactions of the other player are as significant as what is being said. It is stagecraft as almost pure poetry. And though Pinter seems to be playing \u2013 toying \u2013 with the audience, it\u2019s two hours as full of comedy as of jeopardy and unease. It is a great play, and McKellen and Stewart give historic performances.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  If you\u2019ve ever doubted that Harold Pinter deserved his 2005 Nobel Prize, take yourself to see Sean Mathias\u2019 production of No Man\u2019s Land with the duo of theatrical knights, Sir Ian McKellen (as Spooner) and Sir Patrick Stewart (as Hirst) at Wyndham\u2019s Theatre. Forty-one years ago, at the same venue, another pair of knights, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,36,1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1218","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-blogroll-2","7":"category-elsewhere","8":"category-uncategorized","9":"entry","10":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbv6zV-jE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1218"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1237,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218\/revisions\/1237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}