John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson were the first to appear in Harold Pinter's 1975 play, initially at the Old Vic and then on this very stage for the West End transfer. A play can't get a better introduction to theatre audiences than that. But, these days, No Man's Land is making a strong case to be one of the also-rans of the Pinter canon, especially compared to such front-runners as The Caretaker and The Homecoming, which also depict the least cosy of domestic situations.
An abusive father rules the roost in The Homecoming, a bully of a brother in The Caretaker, while here it is Patrick Stewart's gangster man-of-letters Hirst into whose imposing Hampstead house he has invited Ian McKellen's shambolic poet, Spooner.
All of these plays evoke threat, though in No Man's Land, far less disturbingly than the others. Each derives their tense drama from the arrival of an increasingly unwelcome visitor, though in No Man's Land much less interestingly. And, in all of them, there is a sense that everyone is doomed, though in No Man's Land, not as tragically.
This production, directed by Sean Mathias, was seen earlier in New York as a companion piece to Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, with the same actors topping the bill. Godot is by far the superior play though it says something that in the hands of these two fine, if somewhat grandstanding, actors, Pinter's play is the more rewarding. Perhaps there is less to lose.
Why, though, choose this play over superior alternatives? Well, this one indulges actors, more than most. Everyone on stage gets to hold court. Here, a brooding Stewart ramps up the tension with a Hirst who could be a master criminal in the Al Capone mould, until his intimidating silence is replaced in the second half by gushing false modesty for his literary success, and possibly false memory about his and Spooner's past.
But of the two leads it is McKellen's Spooner - the poet who has a habit of "hanging about Hampstead Heath"- who is the more rewarding to watch. (This was also true of their Waiting for Godot).
Spooner is an ageing beatnik, his grey mop tied back into a pygmy ponytail. The removal of his Columbo mac and revolutionary's cap reveals an ill-fitting suit whose trousers flap above a pair of stained, white plimsolls.
Displays of grandiosity are accompanied by a forelock-tugging deference as he cuddles his host's whisky bottle. McKellen never rests. Even as Hirst dwells on his unloved past, Spooner is tuned into the mood swings of his host like a dog wanting to please.
Owen Teale is also on fine form as Briggs, the home owner's bruiser butler to whom Pinter allocates one of the most mesmerising of his London monologues, which here darts through the impenetrable one-way system around Marylebone's Bolsover Street.
Yet Mathias's production, which designer Stephen Brimson Lewis places under a projected canopy of Hampstead trees, often drifts. It's probably not the director's fault entirely. Once the sense of malign intent ebbs, there's not much left here to care about, something that cannot be said of The Caretaker or The Homecoming, or even Pinter's earlier vision of domestic dystopia, The Birthday Party, with its uninvited Jewish gangster Goldberg.
But then, all of those are better plays.
