No Man's Land (play)

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No Man's Land is the name of a 1974 play by the English dramatist Harold Pinter.

The play is a four-hander. Hirst, a successful but isolated and alcoholic writer, looked after and guarded by Foster and Briggs, has met Spooner, a failed writer (if a writer at all) who seeks to inveigle himself into Hirst's household.

Once the four characters are established, the play shows their manoeuvrings - Foster and Briggs seeking to fend off Spooner, and Hirst and Spooner's verbal jousting. An entire scene is spent on Hirst's mistaken - or feigned - recognition of Spooner as an Oxford contemporary from the 1930s, to which Spooner plays up, leading both of them into ever-increasing extravagance of reminiscence. The play ends ambiguously, after Spooner's most blatant attempt to supplant Foster and Briggs, when Hirst pronounces that the subject has been changed for the last time, leaving him (and conceivably the others) 'in no man's land...which never moves, which never changes, which never grows older, but which remains forever icy and silent.'

At the first production The Guardian (Michael Billington) and The Times (Irving Wardle) noted the use of comedy - both high and low - alongside serious and sad undertones - loneliness, the nature of real art, and the route fate chooses for everyone's lives. Peter Hall (see below) disagreed with some of their conclusions, though conceding in his published diaries that Pinter always declined to explain the background or motivation of his characters. Billington (25 June 1975) commented on the author's 'whole battery of comic effects' and concluded his review, 'No Man's Land is, in fact, everyman's land.'

It was produced in 1975 by Peter Hall and shown first at the Old Vic (then home to the Royal National Theatre) and starred John Gielgud as the seedy, calculating Spooner and Ralph Richardson as the burnt-out Hirst. This production was given on Broadway in 1976 and filmed for television in the same year.

The next major revival, in 1992, was at the Almeida Theatre (later transferring to the West End) starring Paul Eddington as Spooner and Pinter himself as Hirst.

In 1994, Jason Robards played Hirst and Christopher Plummer received a Tony Award nomination as Spooner for the Broadway revival directed by David Jones.

In 2001, again at the National Theatre, Spooner was played by John Wood and Hirst by Corin Redgrave. This production was directed by Pinter.