No Man's Land
Wyndham's Theatre
4.6/5 based on 13 reviews (read reviews)- Booking until: Saturday, 17 December 2016
No Man's Land photos
No Man's Land description
It's showing at Wyndham's theatre for a strictly limited season. It's selling out fast. It's No Man's Land, and it stars two of the best-loved and most talented British actors of stage and screen, Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart. The play is a legend itself, a highly entertaining absurdist drama by Harold Pinter, yet another legend and Nobel laureate. Things couldn't get much better.
What's the story? The scene is a pub in Hampstead, London, where we meet two elderly writers and called Hirst and Spooner. Having whiled the evening away telling tall tales, fuelled by astronomical amounts of booze, they're keen to keep the party going. So they stagger back to Hirst's posh home to carry on drinking and bantering late into the night.
The drunker they get, the more extraordinary and unlikely their stories. And their already lively dialogue soon transforms into a fast-paced and revealing power game. When two sinister younger men return home to Hirst's place, things start to get complicated... and the ambiguity deepens.
This is clever stuff. You need your wits about you. It's hard to tell whether the men actually know each other, or the whole thing is an elaborate charade.
Brilliant dialogue and perfect performances left audiences spellbound over the original production at Broadway's Cort theatre, where it played in rep with another well-loved theatre classic Waiting for Godot, directed by Sean Mathias and produced by Playful Productions.
The play itself has an illustrious history. It premièred in the mid-1970s at the West End's Old Vic theatre, then transferred to the National Theatre before heading for Broadway via Wyndham's. And is has probably been on stage somewhere in the world more or less ever since. The last time it was on show in theatreland was 2008, and this revival has been a long time coming. Welcome back!
The creative team is a top quality bunch, with set and costume design by Stephen Brimson Lewis, lighting design from Peter Kaczorowski, and Stuart Thompson, Flying Freehold Productions and Playful Productions producing.
Patrick Stewart has, apparently, always dreamed of playing Spooner or Hirst, as he confessed to The Guardian newspaper. He caught the 1975 production at Wyndham's, with Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud in the staring roles, and loved it so much he saw it three times in a week. That's what we call a great pedigree.
Harold Pinter’s masterpiece is back in a glowing revival. - Time Out New York
An irresistible celebration of two actors’ love affairs with their scripts. New York Times
The play isn't suitable for under 12s.
No Man's Land tickets – A comic masterpiece revived
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Starring
Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen
