"Pinter’s play bamboozled some critics when it premiered in 1975. It remains a conundrum. In London Classic Theatre’s production, those trademark pauses, the barbed anecdotes and the undercurrents of menace quickly come to seem normal, as if real life were the imposter. Despite the grandeur of Bek Palmer’s Hampstead front-room set, no one in No Man’s Land appears comfortable. Palmer’s set curves behind a circular carpet from which homeowner Hirst, ensconced in one of those armchairs, holds court. In a wonderful turn by Moray Treadwell, he veers between pompous assurance and angry, frightened forgetfulness. Padding around him, and sometimes invading this space, are the fey, if cruel Foster (Joel Macey), the sandal-wearing, prissy Spooner (Nicholas Gasson) and the menacing Briggs (Graham O’Mara), whose measured movements - a smoothing of his jacket, a slow arching of his neck - suggest a barely suppressed aggression."
Will Ramsey - The Stage ****
CREATIVE TEAM
Playwright: Harold Pinter
Directed by Michael Cabot
Designed by Bek Palmer
Lighting by Andy Grange
Costume Supervisor: Kate Lyons
Production Managers: Jenny Wheeler & Andy Grange
Assistant Director: Charlie Rogers
Photography: Sheila Burnett
CAST: Nicholas Gasson, Joel Macey, Graham O’Mara, Moray Treadwell.
SELECTED VENUES:
Oldham Coliseum Theatre, Hull Truck Theatre, New Vic Newcastle-under-Lyme, Devonshire Park Theatre Eastbourne, Theatre Royal Winchester, LIghthouse Poole, Connaught Theatre Worthing.
THE SHOW:
In No Man’s Land, his most beguiling and atmospheric play, Harold Pinter mingles truth and memory, art and language to create a world of dark comedy and subtle power games, where nothing is as it seems.
A chance meeting between two elderly writers in a North London pub leads to an alcohol-fuelled night of reminiscence and verbal sparring.
Hirst, a wealthy, alcoholic recluse, invites Spooner, a down-at-heel poet, to his Hampstead townhouse for a nightcap. As the shadows lengthen and the whisky flows, their stories become more elaborate and improbable, until the unexpected arrival of two younger men forces events to take an unexpected turn.
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