No Man's Land

I have watched this many times on YouTube and find more nuances and bits of acting to enjoy each time. The mystery of the play makes this easy to revisit, a pleasure to listen to the lines that conceal meaning within meaning. Especially as spoken by such fine actors. Each of the characters is played with the right balance between sharpness in delivery and obscurity of meaning because they clearly know their motivation even if we have to guess it. This is how Pinter should be done, no spelling out or reduction to clear logical purpose, so that interpretation is left eternally open. "In what does the salvation of the English language rest? It's salvation must rest in you". Replace the word salvation with 'meaning' and you have the ,'meaning' of the play. Of course there are ,recurring themes of old age and approaching death, impotence and loss of female love (did it ever exist?); Success and failure, light and darkness, loyalty and betrayal, memory and 'reality'. Behind it all the usual Pinter power plays, with subterfuge a key weapon. Best of all is the humour and the tangible pleasure in performing these actors have, especially Richardson and Gielgud..All this, and Pinter's masterly writing, make this hugely enjoyable, from the rather creepy late night feel of the set that opens and closes the play, to all the unforgettable turns of phrase: e.g. 'a betwixt twig peeper', 'does she google?', 'consumption of the male member', 'did you have a good war?', 'her buns were the best' (note Richardson's reaction here), and the wonderful way characters respond to each other by rephrasing or turning on their head, lines just spoken by another. Yet never does the humour overwhelm the play and detract from it's predominant sense of despair at life lost.

This is a filmed record of the final teaming of Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson, who first appeared together at the Old Vic Theatre in "Henry IV, Part I" in 1930 and teamed on stage many times since, most memorably in "The Tempest," "A Day By The Sea," "The School for Scandal," and "Home". This television broadcast made for BBCs Granada Television immortalizes their West End and Broadway success of Harold Pinter's fascinating though impenetrable play about the late night meeting between Hirst, a wealthy man of letters and Spooner, a down-at-heels Bohemian poet, which may represent the finest non-Shakespearean performances of either actors' careers. Particularly memorable is Gielgud, who presents Spooner as a clinging, fawning W. H. Auden-like poser which may be his most effective attempt at portraying a characterization on film outside of the typical stiff and very British Gielgud personae that we've grown accustomed to seeing in films like "Arthur" and "The Elephant Man".

Richardson is also marvelous as the more mysterious Spooner, who sometimes recalls Harry Meyers in "City Lights" as a millionaire who invites a tramp into his privileged world when he's plastered only to forget him when he sobers up, as well as Michael Kitchen and Terence Rigby offering excellent support as Hirst's flunkies. But it is Gielgud's masterful work as a sleazy pretender that creates the greatest impression.

Pinter's fascinating though somewhat baffling play has received some major revivals since its original production, most memorably with Christopher Plummer as Spooner and Jason Robards as Hirst (making his final stage performance) in a 1994 Broadway production and a 1992 London staging starring Pinter himself in the role of Hirst, but the play will forever be identified with Richardson and Gielgud in their final appearance together.

I managed to see this televised version at the Museum of Broadcasting in Los Angeles, and can only hope that it will someday be made available on DVD to a wider audience who will be grateful at catching a glimpse of two immortal actors at the height of their power.

I recently saw a tape of this from a BBC4 transmission and was completely transfixed from start to finish. I can't begin to offer any explanation of what it's about exactly, or talk with any self assurance about the work of Harold Pinter, but can honestly say that this is like nothing else I've seen. Certainly, for me, the best thing Pinter's written. Even the Homecoming struggles to compete for sheer relentlessness malevolence and florid verbiage. Gielgud and Richardson are pure magic, with great support from Michael Kitchen (a far cry from Foyle) and Terence Rigby. The script is surreal, unsettling and hilarious. Tangental is possibly the best word I can come up with, for Pinter generally in fact, with the characters and context continually shooting off in new directions, so the mind is constantly readjusting itself to what it's being asked to understand. It's often said that Pinter is heir to Beckett (and Joyce even) but this is more real than Beckett and possibly has greater emotional depth. Nowadays people would probably say "multi layered" but "multi dimensional" is possibly more accurate. The exact relationship between the characters remains ambiguous to end, although some clarity does emerge in the last few scenes. To use a much used analogy, it's like listening to an hour and a half of free jazz. An acquired taste, therefore, but for some seeing this will be a truly momentous epiphany.

Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud made their professional debuts in the 1920's and although like their illustrious contemporaries Laurence Olivier and Michael Redgrave, were certainly no strangers to film, they were essentially theatre animals. The stage was their kingdom in which they all reigned supreme during a Golden Age that is alas gone forever.

By the time Peter Hall's iconic National Theatre production of one of Harold Pinter's greatest plays was filmed for television, Sir Ralph and Sir John, together with Michael Kitchen and Terence Rigby, had lived with their roles for three years, including a stint on Broadway.

Pinter is noted for his love of language with its rhythms and cadences, not to mention the silences that speak volumes and in the persons of Hirst, the successful litterateur and Spooner the down-at-heel poet, he is able to indulge himself fully. Gielgud utilises his classical training to speak Pinter's florid prose 'trippingly off the tongue' as Spooner and one is mesmerised by Richardson's marvellous repose as Hirst. Of the two roles Hirst is by far the more difficult and Richardson is immaculate. For a man of his age his stage fall in Act 1 is a wonder to behold.

This is considered one of Pinter's 'memory plays' but also has distinct echoes of his 'comedies of menace'. In only two of his plays has he chosen to depict physical violence but violence is invariably there beneath the surface and this piece is no exception despite its salubrious surroundings. One of Pinter's favoured theatrical devices is to introduce 'a threat'. Here the threat enters in the form of Spooner but his character ironically becomes the means by which Hirst can be saved from the clutches of Foster and Briggs. There are also moments of comic brilliance. The 'Bolsover Street' monologue of Briggs is hilarious whilst the highlight is the scene in Act 2 where Hirst and Spooner relate various scandalous sexual episodes involving such deliciously named ladies as Stella Winstanley and Arabella Hinscott culminating in Hirst's " I'll have you horsewhipped!" The 'memory' aspect is especially poignant in Hirst's 'photographic album' monologue. Throughout the play the sound of Anglo-Saxon expletives so beautifully enunciated is not only a joy but somehow liberating.

Pinter has been pretty well-served by actors and directors through the years and this production is of the highest quality. It is a haunting, tantalising and poetic piece which serves to remind us that he is indisputably our greatest post-war playwright.