No one who saw John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson in the original production of Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land by Peter Hall will ever forget it. Such was their joint success on both sides of the Atlantic that nobody in England touched the play for nearly 20 years.
Pinter is always difficult to pin down. The action, a series of confrontations and trials of strength, takes place in no man’s land, “which never moves, which never changes, which never grows older, but which remains forever, icy and silent”. “What does it matter what it means,” said Gielgud, “so long as the audience is held and never bored?”
