No Man’s Land

(Harold Pinter)

Adelaide University Theatre Guild, 2014

Clive James described this piece as akin to “a chess game being played out long after a draw should have been declared, since there are only two knights and two pawns left on the board.”  Whilst this could not describe a real game, you get his point. It’s another psychodrama but with enough keen sense of modern discourse to give us (pardon us for this) pause…

Pinter’s stronger characters can never resist the chance to crush their weak or shifty (usually self-delusional) adversaries.  Here, two men with literary pretensions, watched and ‘waitered’ by two young hangers-on, hack at each other from the comfort of their armchairs whilst chugging back buckets of whiskey and bubbles.  It was a cozy little set but there was nothing cozy about the prize-winning performance of Michael Baldwin, all tip and no iceberg, and John Edge, malice and lethal comprehension incarnate as he let his flawed interlocutor talk himself into the void.  It was nicely directed by Warwick Cooper.

800px-Harold_Pinter

Portrait of Harold Pinter by Reginald Gray [“Lord Lancer? He’s not one of the Bengal Lancers, is he?”]

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