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No Man's Land
No Man's Land. Written by Harold Pinter, directed by Sean Mathias. Performed by Berkeley Rep.
I got tickets to a preview show of this very sold out performance the instant they went on sale in May because it stars Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart. Today I went and saw Captain Picard and Gandalf--excuse me, Professor X and Magneto--act on stage in front of my real live eyeballs! It was great. I spent the first five minutes grinning like a loon to myself, and then Stewart delivered the first laugh line and I was smiling for other reasons.
I'd never seen any Harold Pinter plays before, and he is indeed very much like Samuel Beckett. I honestly think seeing Stewart and McKellen on Broadway this fall in Waiting for Godot might be better in terms of the fannish angle, because their characters in that play are very definitely friends--sometimes they hate each other, but that's not an unusual part of friendship--whereas in this play it's never entirely clear whether their characters have ever actually met before they walk into Stewart's character's house and start drinking like fishes. For that matter, it's never entirely clear what's going on.
I very much enjoyed the play, despite my confusion--the Wikipedia article, when I looked it up afterward, seemed to match my impressions pretty well--partly because it was hilarious. Patrick Stewart in particular, given that he's fairly taciturn for most of the first act, had a lot of very funny, often very short lines, and he was wonderful in general. His character has hair! It's the first time since I, Claudius that I've seen him with hair. And Ian McKellen of course was also amazing as the more garrulous, more disreputable Spooner. There were some other people too and they were also great.
Although this was a preview, the production was very nearly flawless (McKellen almost flubbed one line in the first act, but saved it because he is flawless), but honestly, that one flub--which of course betrayed the artificiality of the whole enterprise--brought home just how far off the mark Pinter's original unkind critics were. It's still drama--it's still a play, even if it's a skeleton compared to the more fully-fleshed scripts that are still so much more common than this kind of modern stuff. Which is kind of cool.
I got tickets to a preview show of this very sold out performance the instant they went on sale in May because it stars Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart. Today I went and saw Captain Picard and Gandalf--excuse me, Professor X and Magneto--act on stage in front of my real live eyeballs! It was great. I spent the first five minutes grinning like a loon to myself, and then Stewart delivered the first laugh line and I was smiling for other reasons.
I'd never seen any Harold Pinter plays before, and he is indeed very much like Samuel Beckett. I honestly think seeing Stewart and McKellen on Broadway this fall in Waiting for Godot might be better in terms of the fannish angle, because their characters in that play are very definitely friends--sometimes they hate each other, but that's not an unusual part of friendship--whereas in this play it's never entirely clear whether their characters have ever actually met before they walk into Stewart's character's house and start drinking like fishes. For that matter, it's never entirely clear what's going on.
I very much enjoyed the play, despite my confusion--the Wikipedia article, when I looked it up afterward, seemed to match my impressions pretty well--partly because it was hilarious. Patrick Stewart in particular, given that he's fairly taciturn for most of the first act, had a lot of very funny, often very short lines, and he was wonderful in general. His character has hair! It's the first time since I, Claudius that I've seen him with hair. And Ian McKellen of course was also amazing as the more garrulous, more disreputable Spooner. There were some other people too and they were also great.
Although this was a preview, the production was very nearly flawless (McKellen almost flubbed one line in the first act, but saved it because he is flawless), but honestly, that one flub--which of course betrayed the artificiality of the whole enterprise--brought home just how far off the mark Pinter's original unkind critics were. It's still drama--it's still a play, even if it's a skeleton compared to the more fully-fleshed scripts that are still so much more common than this kind of modern stuff. Which is kind of cool.
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---L.
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