Harold Pinter's stoic 1975 play No Man's Land, starring Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellan, was staged at London's Wyndham's Theatre between September 20 and December 17, 2016, after a short tour of the UK. The production was a revival of its Broadway run in 2013 and 2014, where it played in repertory with Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, with the two knights also in the roles of Vladimir and Estragon, and both plays directed by Sean Mathias. Toward the end of its run, the performance of December 15 was broadcast live into cinemas in the United Kingdom and Europe, and live or soon after in the United States and other territories, as part of the National Theatre Live project. NT Live began broadcasting live theater in 2009 and to date has offered local access to over forty London stage productions to over 2,000 venues around the world. While these shows cannot offer the direct intimacy and collective experience that a live performance affords, they do capture aspects of the performances, often through the availability of close-ups, that theatrical experience cannot. Stewart's and McKellen's rich and nuanced performances of Hirst and Spooner, alongside those of Owen Teale and Damien Molony as Briggs and Foster, proved worthy of this level of scrutiny, and certainly merited the worldwide exposure.Set in an Endgame-like, rotund, paneled room, with a projected skyscape of a canopy of leaves overhead, the production visually is austere and claustrophobic. The décor omits the bookcases that Pinter designates for the sparse set, focusing instead on the centrality of alcohol in the bar that figures center-stage. Properties and costume establish a respect of period, with 1970s suits, Cuban heels, CND badge, cucumber sandwiches, and best china. As such, the production is openly naturalistic, and the acting style hits this straight off the bat. In their first scene, Stewart projects a clearly disoriented Hirst, manifesting some trembling, insecure signs of dementia (Oliver Sacks had been consulted by the production). He sits and tolerates the garrulous Spooner, presented by McKellen with relish as he owns the stage with his banter. The performance generates and sustains a level of hilarity as the two men engage, quickly winning over the live and cinema audiences, though the comedy is masterfully (at first) held in restrained and measured check. Where most productions of this play might promote an audience's investment swiftly in suspecting and wishing to learn more of Spooner's motivations, Stewart's troubled Hirst, bemused and vulnerable to exploitation, draws in our concern equally.The naturalism eventually gives way occasionally to other modes, most notably in the second act where a fortified Hirst reappears and bamboozles Spooner with his “memories” of him as Charles Wetherby. Something of the Didi and Gogo music hall revue appears in this exchange, as the two attempt to out-do one another, and the camera close-ups make this all the more evident. A quick visual joke is even inserted, with McKellan undoing his jacket and letting his paunch out, only to pull his belly back in when Stewart delivers the line about Spooner/Wetherby being of athletic stature. Other lazzi, such as Spooner's foolery over offering coffee and making a coin disappear, bring in touches of clowning levity that perhaps stand out more on screen than when appreciated at a distance from the stage. Certainly, the cinema audience might occasionally laugh where the theater audience did not, or before them, being able to see detail that was more obscure in the theater (including Stewart's brief corpse when he spills coffee on himself).Teale's Briggs, built like a nightclub gangland bouncer, and Molony's Foster, a lithe, sanguine manservant, are performed with considerable range and subtlety in this production, which affords them more vulnerability than these characters usually project. Perhaps a product of an overtly naturalistic approach to character motivation and backstory, Briggs's shift from self-confident threat in act 1 to a more contained and servile presence in act 2 is particularly notable.The NT Live showing offered audiences “added value” in the form of an after-show discussion with cast and director, chaired by Samira Ahmed. Interestingly, in this discussion it transpired that this production manifested something of a genetic connection to the original 1975 debut, when Hirst and Spooner were created by Sir Ralph Richardson and Sir John Gielgud. A nineteen-year-old Mathias had been present at the first night, and a devoted Stewart had gone to see the play three times in one week. The latter admitted to making use of two instances from that production, including Richardson's deliberately firm clink of bottle against glass with each refill. Nonetheless, the vision of Pinter's play in this production was original, distinct, witty, tense, and, in the final moments when Teale and Molony deliberately retreat from the fading pool of light around Stewart and McKellen, appropriately sour.
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Feb 29, 2024
Ansam Riyadh Abdulla + 1
