Dec 30 2008
No man’s land
Of all the disambiguation pages on Wikipedia I felt I could have written about almost all the philosophical, cultural and obsessive articles related to “No Man’s Land” except one: the Harold Pinter play of that name. Probably the one that summarises and explores the issue better and more imaginatively than all of the others.
For those who do not know the work (like me until today) the play is pretty much about precisely what is suggested by the title: facets of personality caught in the grey area between life and death, between certainty and complete chaos, where roles, history and understanding of one’s place in the greater scheme of things are - once certain, static and rigid - thrown into fluid confusion and their stability threatened by their very acts of self-reflection and analysis causing the compartmentalised balance of power between seemingly set notions and roles to be challenged beyond the controlling intelligence. By the way, the “covert-homo-erotic power struggle” did not seem that covert.
Well, at least that’s my interpretation.
My wife suggested seeing the play after the writer’s recent demise and so we managed to get 2 of the last tickets in the house for a hastily arranged extra matinee performance as the play neared the end of its run. This was the first Pinter play that I have seen performed on the stage and I am certain that it will not be the last. A throroughly thought-provoking performance by Michael Gambon (Hirst), David Bradley (Spooner), David Walliams (Foster), and Nick Dunning (Briggs) and a true delight for trench-dwellers and lovers of linguistics everywhere.
