No Man’s Land (2016)

I’m still puzzling over this National Theatre Live production. To be honest, my only tangible previous knowledge of Harold Pinter comes from the Sondheim line, “A matinee, a Pinter play, / Perhaps a piece of Mahler’s.” I’ve never read or seen any of his plays before and had no idea what to expect. It was the cast who, very understandably, drew me in to this one, and I have yet to figure out whether understanding No Man’s Land is even the point.

Two men, Hirst and Spooner, are drinking at Hirst’s splendid home after meeting in a pub. They—well, mostly Spooner—discuss life, poetry, love, and their pasts, but their night is interrupted. Increasing confusion on Hirst’s part, and the arrival of his two at-least-slightly-menacing manservants, throw matters into uncertainty.

I’m afraid that that’s the best summary I can muster. I really don’t get what’s going on here, but I’m a bit comforted by the fact that it doesn’t really seem like I’m supposed to. Certainly, Hirst and Spooner don’t seem to know what’s happening for long stretches of the play. We’re introduced to them as two strangers: maybe they just hit it off and settled in for a night of drinking, maybe the less well-to-do Spooner latched himself onto wealthy Hirst, or maybe this is intended to be a drunken pickup. Over the course of the night (and the following day,) Hirst alternately doesn’t recognize Spooner and claims that they’re old friends from university, while Spooner tries to insert himself between Hirst and his manservants.

Everything here rests on the dialogue, which veers from comical to philosophical to desperate to contemplative. There are pleas and arguments, verbal sparring matches and confessions, and long descriptions of dreams that the dreamer is still grappling with. I can’t pretend that I understand all of it, but watching it, I was fairly gripped all the same. I often felt that I was reaching throughout the play, trying to grab this reference or that innuendo, riding the wave of wherever it was leading me.

I can say with certainty that the performances are stellar. From moment one, as Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen make their appearance, you can almost feel the audience hold its breath, like they can hardly believe they’re in the same room as these two acting greats, who are about to spend the night going toe-to-toe with each other. As Spooner, McKellen is livelier and more loquacious, a drunken fumbler who’s trying to maintain the illusion that he has a firm handle on everything. I feel like the U.K. does a better job than the U.S. of giving McKellen credit for his comedic talents, which are used to good effect here while also giving him the opportunity for more serious moments as well. Stewart’s Hirst is at first quieter and more dignified, the slightly longsuffering straight man to Spooner’s antics, but it isn’t long before he reveals the deep wells within him. He erupts at unexpected moments, and because he’s the one instigating most of the major shifts throughout the play—drunken confusion or senility, I’m not sure—Stewart shows us several different iterations of Hirst by the end. Damien Molony and Owen Teale, as manservants Foster and Briggs, don’t have as much to work with as Stewart and McKellen, but both are very effective in their roles. They come in first with a hint of shadiness, and they proceed to keep both Spooner and the audience wrongfooted as their shifting demeanor obscures what they’re really about.

Warnings

Epic amounts of drinking, language, sexual references, and thematic elements.