Sun.  June 10

 We Googled “Harold Pinter” and “alcohol” and came up with 81,700 hits. Low, we thought. But alcohol certainly does frame the surreal play “No Man’s Land,” which Pinter first put up in 1975, the year it’s set, in a luxury Northwest London home. The stage at American Repertory Theatre's production – which closes today Sunday June 10, directed by David Wheeler – looks cozy and comfy, with a well-appointed bar. The owner, Hirst (Paul Benedict) is a successful writer; Spooner (Max Wright) is, perhaps, a failed poet and interloper (and maybe a friend in past years). He arrives for some unknown reason. “I’m too old for any expectations, don’t you think?” asks Spooner early on. “Yes,” replies Hirst, who much later says, “Tonight you find me in the last lap of a race I’d long forgotten to run.”
They drink at the beginning, drink at the end, and drink pretty much throughout. (At one point, they reminded us of the old men at the bar in John Cleese’s great sitcom “Fawtly Towers.”) They are joined by two younger men, Foster (Hirst’s son?, played by Henry David Clarke) and Briggs (Lewis D. Wheeler), a possibly malicious manservant. What goes on during one night and the following day is a whirlwind of deception, puffery, self-flagellation, recovered memory (or not) and ennui. Resolution? Don’t look here. Meaning? Jeremy Geidt, a member of the A.R.T. company not in this show but at the post-show party, laughed when asked if he knew what it meant. “Pinter didn’t now what it meant!” he answered. (Actually, Pinter delights in professing an inability – or maybe disinterest – in summing up any of his plays. By the way, Pinter played Hirst at one point.)
One interpretation: All the characters are stuck in a “No Exit” like purgatory, maybe dead and doomed to repeat their actions forever. Hirst says near the end, “Let us change the subject for the last time? What does that mean? What was the previous subject?” The younger men, possibly lovers, are by turns obsequious and nasty – maybe they want to caretake the rich old man to death and do away with Spooner. As the play winds down, Spooner says, “You are in no man’s land. It never changes. It remains forever, icy and silent.” Hirst: “I’ll drink to that.” Curtain. (Well, there’s no curtain, but you know …)
After the performance, we talked with the Wheelers, Lewis at the bar, and his father David, the next day by phone.

“It’s an extremely complex play,” said Lewis, 37, “a power struggle over Hirst. Foster and I have embedded themselves in his world. Is he on the verge of death? Are we all dead?” Lewis said, as an actor, he can’t think of his character as being dead: “I have this love for Foster. And I have this great gig taking care of this guy.”
“This play isn’t done that often – maybe half a dozen times,” Lewis added. “ On the Pinter spectrum it’s one of the most weird. It may be about (Hirst and Spooner), the two sides of Pinter’s personality.” That is, one’s a success, the other not. The knife-edge of fate.
      For David Wheeler, this is his 14th Pinter play. Why so many? “He’s after the complexity of human thought and behavior,” says David. “He’s always thinking in terms of possibilities. You can’t talk about certainties. He worries about statement. Isn’t so-and-so making too much of a statement?” David says when Pinter played Hirst he created a back story for the character, but wouldn’t let any of the actors in on it. They knew only what was in the script – and their own back stories.
    As to the notion that “No Man’s Land” presents us with a dismal purgatory, David says, “That may have pertinence to Hirst’s situation, but it’s special night for Spooner. Spooner’s a drinker too, but not as in bad shape. Hirst, I assume to be a great writer who slid downhill, The two young men, the servants mock of Spooner, have fun with one another. Hirrst has some fun. Spooner has less fun, as he’s busy on his ladder to security and being a companion.”
     The director’s main challenge? “Making all the actors be able to play their games appropriately and powerfully.”  The final show is today at 2 p.m. at the Loeb Drama Center. Tickets:  $76-$29.

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