No Man's Land is dark, make no mistake. The land that is for no man has a darkness to it
But often in the moments of darkness comes a greater honesty about human nature
I first encountered Pinter as a member of the audience
I remember that night as I remember the three times I sat in this theatre...
...watching Sir John and Sir Ralph, simply being thrilled by what I heard
The idea wasn't to tour it. The idea was to do it in London
The tour came very quickly after that because my colleague and dear friend here...
...loves touring and he has infected me with the same bug
There's an enjoyment of the moment that comes across when you're playing to a full house...
...in Cardiff, in Sheffield, Brighton, that we experienced that made it very special
You felt deeply appreciated
I like the homogeneity of a local audience and I'm grateful. As a child...
...because if I hadn't seen John Gielgud play King Lear in Manchester...
...and many other distinguished actors, I probably wouldn't have caught the theatre bug as quickly as I did
So I think, if we don't have a duty, we have a sort of responsibility...
...to think of touring as being what we do for a living
We were also fortunate in a way that regional audiences no longer are
Because there were scores of permanent repertory theatres...
...like the first one I began in, in Lincoln, which was a weekly rep
I became a regular theatre goer before I became any kind of actor
For a play that is so about the words, and the words are so perfectly chosen...
...one misplaced word, and it seems wrong
It's beautifully put together by Harold Pinter and so I feel I have a duty visually...
...to balance that and find a kind of an accord with that
If I was trying to be too loud with it, for example, visually loud, it would somehow distort the play
The room is a kind of a prison in the play, the home is a prison
And once you step inside the room you do feel rather trapped
Stephen very cleverly came up with a room that was real, and also had a very stylised quality to it
He made it circular, which was a serious coup, a very very brilliant move
It then allowed an encasement to the acting, and this room and the circular motion of it...
...became very very useful to the choreography of the play...
...and the fact that the characters are doing a kind of strange dance with each other
It's a very small set but it's a very beautiful set
Because it's an intimate show, every little piece counts, so every little crease, every little, you know...
We put a lot more effort into a small intimate than a bigger musical.
I think sometimes smaller shows can be a little bit more difficult because the attention to detail has to be there
For example I make butter curls for the butter that goes on stage...
...because they were very, very common in the seventies, and I have to decorate it with parsley
And everything has to be pristine and look beautiful...
...because those are the types of things that the audience will be looking out for
The role of video in the show is to set the action and frame it within the bounds of Hampstead Heath
It's one very strong state that stays and presides over the action
But it evolves according to the passage of time and to support the narrative
So it's very interesting having a single stage picture...
...which very slowly and subtly has to go with the narrative
This play is fraught with mystery and sinister danger
And it is in a way what you make of it as an individual, rather than it's not presented to you
The ideas are not presented or given, you have to formulate your own ideas as you watch it
Everyone seems to have taken something different from it
Some people say, You know, it's obviously about memory
And then someone else will say No, it's about ghosts and, you know it is probably about those things
But it's also about class, it's about alcohol, it's about age, it's about legacy
It's about wasted opportunities, you know essentially it's about life, really
ls it particular to a British sense of humour, that almost at its most painful...
...watching somebody truly trip over, or worse, be completely threatened by a situation...
...can appear to be funny?
The language is absolutely superb and I think this is as accurate a performance of his words as you'll get
This play is about control and it's like so much of Pinter, it's a kind of tactical game of chess
Sean, our director, used to say in rehearsals...
...that at any given moment on the stage one person has the power...
...and the three other characters are constantly trying to regain the power off that person
There's four characters and to me it's like a piece of chamber music or something, it's a quartet
And at various points each character has to bring something...
...and take on an emotional, psychological narrative, if not an actual plot
You have to give some insight, and Pinter has asked you to do that
Harold Pinter defined himself as much as a poet as he did a playwright
And I think he's on record as saying of this play, No Man's Land...
...that it is in a sense a poem. And that may confuse you, or it may be a help
Working with Sir Ian and Sir Patrick is so much more fun than I could possibly have imagined
It's utterly fascinating to work with the pair of them and watch them interact...
...and really have them take you to a place that you didn't know was going to happen
It became obvious quite quickly within the first couple of weeks...
...that this was going to be a very successful working relationship in which we would all benefit
Owen and Damien would be new and be bringing new characters
But Ian and Patrick's characters would grow and change
And therefore the whole production would benefit from this and grow and change
I didn't know Owen, I knew of his work, and I didn't know Damien
I swear to you that the relationship that the four of us have onstage and offstage...
...is as if we have been together for fifty years, and that doesn't always happen.
Its a lot of fun to do this play, I think, but its quite a demanding play as well...
...because its quite taut, the play, it's all in the mind
One man is losing his mind and the others play on his mind, and on each other's minds through that
So it's a very strange, wonderful but disciplined dance
With this production, and this is worth saying again for our audience who will be watching it on the screen...
...they will be watching a unique event because spontaneity and continual adjustments...
...sometimes miniscule adjustments, have become threaded into the fabric of the performance
We have a little tiny improvisation every night before we speak Harold's first line
It's tiny, it's only a few words, but that keys us off onto a new telling of No Man's Land