#Play No Man’s Land

FEBRUARY

??. by Harold Pinter


Finish date: 15 February 2022
Genre: Play
Rating: B
Review:


Good news: Two ageing writers: Hirst is a wealthy but crippled by his memories
…early stages of dementia. Spooner re-invents himself from memory as he goes along. The two old men reminisce about cottages they may  have had. Pinter mocks  social privilege of the upper class in England The lively conversation soon turns into a revealing power game. when two servants, Briggs and Foster enter the room. The relationships  among these men are exposed, with trouble  and hilarity. It’s a bleak, disturbing, small, intense and bitter play also very funny!


Good news: Style: Witty banter; awkward pauses (intentional to “wake up the audience”.
Language is used as a weapon. Memory…or lack of is  not just as a dramatic device ….but as a key to understanding of the play. Title and end of play: No Man’s Land (reference to dementia)


Personal:

Strong point: this play whose dialogue is ‘fueled with alcohol’
It will make you laugh….and touch a heart string.

Strong point: Language is a like a cross-word puzzle…at times confusing.

Weak point: it must be seen on stage…and preferably with
…great actors like McKellen and Stewart!
What did I learn by reading this play?

Literary device:  subtext
Pinter, however, preferred to focus on the subtext and tension beneath dialogue.
Example subtext in No Man’s Land:
Spooner asks Hirst if he often hangs “around Hampstead Heath”
and the pub Jack Straw’s Castle.
Both are notorious for homosexual activity in the 1960s and ‘70s.
Something one might miss…but this subtext is there.