✭✭✭✭✩

by Harold Pinter, directed by Albert Schultz

Soulpepper Theatre Company, Premiere Dance Theatre, Toronto

July 10-August 23, 2003

At 83, William Hutt, one of Canada's finest actors, is appearing in a play in Toronto for the first time in almost 20 years.  That alone is reason enough to see Soulpepper's production of Harold Pinter's enigmatic No Man's Land (1975).  If the production sometimes lacks the precision the play demands, it is still a remarkable if disorienting experience.

Hirst, a wealthy man of letters (Peter Donat), has invited has invited Spooner (William Hutt), a shabby man he met at a pub, home for drinks.  Claiming to be a poet Spooner attempts to inveigle himself into Hirst's good graces, but meets with strong opposition from Hirst's two employees (a well-contrasted Stuart Hughes and Michael Hanrahan).  At least, that's what seems to be happening.  Ultimately, we have no way of knowing if anything the characters say is actually true since all four use words as weapons in an ongoing game of oneupsmanship.  Pinter thus places them and us in the limbo of the title and forces us to ask why, when faced with isolation, we believe some fictions and not others.

Director Albert Schultz is excellent at letting us see the play as metatheatre by making the characters seemingly aware they are on stage.  He emphasizes the play's rich humour but often at the expense of building up tension and a sense of impending tragedy.        

Those used to seeing Hutt as a raging Shakespearean monarch will be amazed by his understated Spooner, a loser in life kept going only by his fantasies and quixotic optimism.  It's a great role and a great performance.  Hutt's most minute gestures reveal the unspoken fears and hopes beneath Spooner's genteel posing.  He makes Spooner's final plea to stay with Hirst both beautiful and heartbreaking.  In contrast, Donat's more conventionally theatricality does not convey enough of the terrible iciness of Hirst's egotism.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2003-07-17.

Photo: William Hutt as Spooner. ©2003 Soulpepper.