THE THEATER MIRROR, New England’s LIVE Theater Guide
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MARQUEE | USHER | SEATS |
INTERMISSION | CURTAIN |
note: entire contents copyright 2007 by Carl A. Rossi
Hirst … Paul Benedict
Spooner … Max Wright
Foster … Henry David Clarke
Briggs … Lewis J. Wheeler
Harold Pinter’s NO MAN’S LAND, at the A.R.T., leans heavily upon the Pinteresque than on his unexplained plots: Hirst and Spooner, two old men, have met by chance over drinks --- the former is a successful, dulled author; the later, a scruffy, failed poet. Hirst invites Spooner into his home to continue drinking and to co-habit a No Man’s Land of nothingness; Foster and Briggs, two younger men, serve and threaten their elders. Whether Hirst’s home is really a tomb, whether Hirst and Spooner really do know one another, whether Foster and Briggs are Cocteau’s angels of death or Sartre’s bellboys from hell depend upon how much effort you spend in sorting it all out (you can always cut to the chase and declare it all Brilliant). “I have been through this before,” muses Spooner and so have Mr. Pinter and his audiences; on the night I attended, Mr. Pinter’s familar menace was warmly greeted as if it were an old friend --- “a matinee, a Pinter play” sings Mr. Sondheim’s Joanne --- this once Angry Young Man, turned entertainer.
After A.R.T.’s hideous take on THE BIRTHDAY PARTY, its NO MAN’S LAND might well be a night at the Huntington: J. Michael Griggs’ large, handsome setting, ominous with wood, is free of distortion; the actors do not become Grotesques and there is even an intermission. Unfortunately, David Wheeler’s direction is also in the Huntington manner, skating over the monsters beneath the ice, and without those hinted depths all that elliptical dialogue dissolves to mere chatter (remember that Mr. Pinter took the tea-time cadences of the English voice and turned them inside out). Max Wright makes a meal out of Spooner’s opening monologue, wandering about when he should be clinging to Hirst like a succubus, but he limbers up for his closing one which becomes the cry of a rudderless soul. Paul Benedict’s Hirst is an agreeable host, no more, no less; I couldn’t help feeling that Mr. Bentley from THE JEFFERSONS sitcom had grown older and dottier (oddly, that TV credit isn't listed in Mr. Benedict’s program-bio). In Edwardian days, Lewis J. Wheeler might have been a matinee idol --- never underestimate charm in the theatre --- though I sense Mr. Wheeler will play Young Men, friendly or sinister, for years to come with as little fire or passion as he does now; his Briggs features the Cockney glottal stops that have been uttered, thrice before. Henry David Clarke captures the British flippancy familiar to PBS viewers; having the right orchestration, Mr. Clarke makes his Foster the most striking characterization --- to have him unexpectedly appear in a powder blue suit, carrying Hirst’s walking boots and smiling like a demented nanny, hints at what Mr. Pinter was once all about.