The New York Times - Highly Recommended
"...In the absurdly enjoyable revivals of Harold Pinter's No Man's Land ¯ and Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, ¯ ¦Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart make a most persuasive case for conversation as both the liveliest and loneliest of arts. I have never before heard American audiences respond to any production of Pinter or Beckett with such warm and embracing laughter...I'm going to offer one major caveat regarding two improbably pleasurable shows. Mr. Mathias's productions seldom give full value to the deep mortal chill of these plays, of the fraught dangers in Pinter's universe or the aching pathos within Beckett's. Land ¯ is basically a couple of white guys (and very British guys, that's important) sitting around talking. And drinking a lot. And swapping memories that may or may not be accurate, and that they may or may not have in common. This staging makes the clearest case I know for Land ¯ as Pinter's appropriation and devastation of the classic drawing-room comedy. And I will forever cherish the memory of Mr. McKellen's nimble Spooner and Mr. Stewart's increasingly paralytic Hirst doing their best to one-up each other, in authoritatively delivered nonsense."
NY Daily News - Highly Recommended
"...Being stuck in limbo has never been so magnetic. Credit the top-notch tag team of Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart ¦light up Broadway in Harold Pinter's No Man's Land ¯ and Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. ¯ The vintage purgatory tales, performed in repertory under the direction of Sean Mathias, are unapologetically enigmatic. But amid Pinter's elliptical storytelling and pregnant pauses and Beckett's existential mystery, ideas about power, class, memory and mortality get your gray matter buzzing. No Man's Land, ¯...unfolds in the den of an English manse...[belonging] to Hirst (Stewart), a rich author whose success doesn't keep him from getting lost in foggy forgetfulness. Spooner (McKellen) is a shabby failed writer who's been invited for a nightcap or 50 and may never get out. McKellen's...got one of the most expressive faces, voices and command of body language on the planet. Stewart gets Hirst's imperiousness and vulnerability just right. Lending support as Hirst's henchmen are Billy Crudup and Shuler Hensley. They're strangely appealing even as they ramp up the Pinteresque chill and menace."
Associated Press - Highly Recommended
"...The theater gods have given you two inscrutably postmodern classics this season. They've also been so kind as to throw in a pair of theater gods. An existential double bill of "No Man's Land" by Harold Pinter and "Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Beckett ¦to play with your head but offering two knights at their peerless best ¦Each play, performed here with the same four actors under the brilliant direction of Sean Mathias, has bedeviled interpretation for generations. Putting them together in repertory sparks connections, even if the inevitable questions multiply. The plays may not always be your cup of tea filled with spare language, ambiguity, unreliability and disintegration but there can be no complaints about the service. [No Man's Land is] A nightmarish swamp of a play, each man in it seems to spin in their own orbit stuck in their own no man's land, which we are told, "remains forever icy and silent." McKellen's Spooner is an overly voluble, romantic lush with a moocher's heart ¦[he] is a wonder. Stewart plays the more reticent Hirst as an unsteady, hard-boiled drunk, surrounded by ghosts ¦ [he] is marvelous."
Hollywood Reporter - Highly Recommended
"...McKellen takes on the choicest of the main roles in the poet Spooner, an obsequious sponge who has met well-heeled man of letters Hirst (Stewart) over drinks in a local pub and accompanied him to his home [and] ¦unceremoniously imprisoned for the night by Hirst's hostile amanuensis Foster (Crudup) and his intimidating butler/bodyguard Briggs. However, both plays belong to Stewart and especially McKellen. Aloof in the Pinter role and benign in the Beckett, Stewart can shift from dryly dignified to pathetic within a single sentence, finding surprise moments of humor and poignancy. But it's McKellen whose inventive line readings are most ideally paired with two playwrights known for their idiosyncratic use of language. What's more, his effortless physicality ¦ makes every minute he's onstage mesmerizing."
Variety - Highly Recommended
"...Trying to figure out a Pinter play is like pounding nails in your skull. But holding forth in a death-defying repertory bill of Harold Pinter's No Man's Land ¯ and Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, ¯ master thespians Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart make it all seem crystal-clear under the incisive direction of Sean Mathias. The title alone of No Man's Land ¯ is enough to give you chills, referring as it does to some sepulchral place or state of existence which never moves, which never changes, which never grows older, but which remains forever icy and silent. ¯ In this production, Stewart and McKellen play the roles they seem born to play. Stewart uses his noble profile and plummy voice to lend gravitas to Hirst, who springs to life in the second act to engage McKellen's puckishly charming Spooner in a duel of wits."
USA Today - Highly Recommended
"... ¦it's fitting [Waiting for Godot] ¦is being performed in repertory with Beckett-admirer Harold Pinter's No Man's Land ¦in which existential misery is surveyed with a sly wit that can pierce the funny bone as much as the soul ¦the leading men are as haunting as they are amusing ¦The bond between the central figures in No Man's Land is more elusive. We meet Hirst, apparently a successful poet and alcoholic, and Spooner, apparently a loquacious mooch, in Hirst's London home ¦Hirst, played here by a marvelously deadpan Stewart, listens and drinks while Spooner McKellen, exquisite in his poised buffoonery babbles on ¦in Act Two...it's implied they may be old friends. Or, as their increasingly curious recollections and revelations ¦can suggest, we could be witnessing a game, or a scam, or some blurring of reality and fantasy or delusion. With Crudup and Hensley as Hirst's similarly mysterious minders, this Land captures the mesmerizing, inextricable brutality and humor of Pinter's dialogue ¦Both Land and Godot, in fact, prove that the most challenging and unsettling material can make for accessible, even buoyant, entertainment."
New York Post - Highly Recommended
"...But there's a simple explanation for Pinter's No Man's Land ¯ and Beckett's Waiting for Godot ¯ thriving amid a sea of light musical fare: They both star Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart ¦[both] directed by Sean Mathias. If you have to pick one, No Man's Land ¯ is the way to go. It's all very inscrutable and cool, but the show's mysteriously compelling. This has a lot to do with the easy rapport of the leads, who are besties in real life McKellen even became a Universal Life Church minister to officiate at Stewart's wedding. Still, this doesn't prevent McKellen from wiping the floor with him. At 74, he's lighter on his feet than men a third his age, with a highly entertaining mix of looseness and precision, and a stunningly mobile face."
Entertainment Weekly - Highly Recommended
"...[Becket and Pinter] are not the most accessible of playwrights. The same cannot be said of Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, who remain admirably approachable and compelling ¦Now they're bringing a freshness and an almost kinetic camaraderie to two of the more challenging English-language plays of the 20th century: Beckett's absurdist 1953 epic Waiting for Godot and Pinter's elusive 1975 head-scratcher No Man's Land ¦one doesn't go to a Pinter play seeking clarity of exposition. Instead, one should go for the witty language play, the verbal power struggles, and two acting titans scrambling for the upper hand in a game whose rules are never fully explained. In both plays, McKellen and Stewart deliver a master class in acting that seems to echo Beckett and Pinter's underlying theme: the struggle of men against the challenge and inevitability of death. By their age-defying enthusiasm ¦[they] manage the tricky feat of making challenging material engaging, fun, and ultimately life-affirming. The ease of their companionship is almost infectious, elevating these productions to the sublime."
Bergen Record - Highly Recommended
"...Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" and Harold Pinter's "No Man's Land" are absurdist plays ¦But the best way to enjoy the revivals ¦is not to puzzle over their meanings until after you leave. In the theater, enjoy the journey: the odd dramatic terrain; bracing language; comedy, both high and low, and, most of all, the acting. Two great theater performers, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart ably supported by Billy Crudup and Shuler Hensley team up to make each of the productions an absorbing experience. The set-up of "No Man's Land" is familiar in Pinter's work: an interloper intrudes on a settled, if strange, household. In McKellen's richly enjoyable portrait [Spooner is] a practiced schemer ready to use every wile he possesses to get around the chilly Hirst. Although not as dramatically potent as Pinter's similarly plotted "The Caretaker," the play, like "Godot," gives two commanding performers an opportunity to provide a master class in acting. They're a treat."
Newsday - Highly Recommended
"...Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, lifelong staples of the British theater ¦are extending their pop-culture magnetism to the altogether unlikely but dazzling masters of 20th century drama Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter. And what a treat this is. Both actors, neither one immune to the lure of excess showmanship, are terrific-stylish, disciplined, strikingly different-in Sean Mathias' repertory stagings of Beckett's familiar 1953 masterwork, "Waiting for Godot," and Pinter's more rare, chilling and opaque "No Man's Land." McKellen has a flashier physical role than does Stewart in Pinter's 1975 power play about Hirst, a successful alcoholic writer ¦has brought a seedy gadfly poet (McKellen) named Spooner home to his handsome, sparsely furnished house with the well-stocked liquor cabinet...this is the Pinter of malevolent non sequiturs and the silken menace of unstated violence. People say nothing or speak in long, florid, luscious riffs as they scratch beneath the aging surface of civilized men. Billy Crudup and Shuler Hensley-essential supporting players in both works-are deliciously, maliciously dry as dangerous underlings jockeying for position."
amNY - Recommended
"...While it was a marvelous idea to pair up Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen as the quintessential tramps Vladimir and Estragon in "Waiting for Godot," this revival of Beckett's existentialist classic is weighed down by Sean Mathias' problematic direction and the decision to perform it in repertory with Harold Pinter's 1975 drama "No Man's Land." In "No Man's Land," an established poet (Stewart) who inexplicably invites to his home a barfly (McKellen) who may or may not be his old school chum, leaving the literary figure's secretary and bodyguard (Crudup and Hensley) puzzled. Although it is a minor title in the Pinter canon, it is the more successful of the shows."
Wall Street Journal - Highly Recommended
"...Indeed, "No Man's Land," ¦is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, a revival so creatively acted and sensitively staged by Sean Mathias that you'll be mulling it over for days after you depart the theater. It is, however, an infallibly effective vehicle for two stars of high wattage. John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson created the lead roles in London in 1975 ¦but this production is better. Whereas Mr. Gielgud played Spooner, the poor poet, in an irresistibly showy manner, Mr. McKellen's fey, shambling performance is more firmly rooted in reality, and Mr. Stewart is just as believable as Hirst, whose now-comic, now-ominous relationship with his colleague is so inscrutable as to defy intelligible explanation. Billy Crudup and Shuler Hensley, who round out the ensemble, are decisively impressive in the supporting roles of both plays. "No Man's Land" is definitely the show to see if you're only seeing one but I would have been sorry to miss the second half of "Godot.""
NBC New York - Highly Recommended
"...Though written decades apart, the connecting tissue between No Man's Land ¯ and Waiting for Godot ¯ is that their central characters are trapped, yet don't do anything to escape their situations. The two pieces are explorations of aging and friendship, and the unreliability of memory. If you can possibly relate to such notions ¦then Stewart and McKellen make for trustworthy guides through the murky postmodern territory carved out by Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett, respectively. In the staid No Man's Land, ¯ Hirst (Stewart), a successful poet, and Spooner (McKellen), a failed one, having met in a London pub, drink into the night in Hirst's well-appointed home. The delight here is in moments as base as watching Stewart gradually descend into stumbling drunkenness ¦McKellen has the showiest part, as he moves from caddish opportunist to cornered prey. Pinter is not for everyone, and if you're the kind of person who likes your theater tied up in a bow, you're likely to get lost in No Man's Land ¯ ¦ though with Stewart and McKellen at the wheel, at least you'll be making good time."
Time Out New York - Highly Recommended
"...Yet no matter how many glasses [Hirst and Spooner] glug, it's we in the audience who lose our legs. That's because the language they speak is purely intoxicating, in the sense of both imbuing pleasurable warmth and of making one brood, lose one's bearings and perhaps see ghosts. Harold Pinter's 1974 masterpiece No Man's Land ¦in a glowing revival starring Sirs Ian McKellen as Spooner and Patrick Stewart as Hirst. The acting giants are very much cast to type (Stewart: hearty; McKellen: weedy), and they're a perfect pair. Like its repertory partner, Waiting for Godot ¦No Man's Land is a play in which nothing happens, twice...The piece follows Pinter's classic pattern interloper becomes assimilated in a space where rules keep shifting but there's a poetic, Eliotic quality of desolated ¦We may cross No Man's Land in the future, but it's hard to imagine two men better suited to drink from its bitter and darkly euphoric cup."
The Wrap - Recommended
"...Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart bring their considerable comic talents to two existential angst-ridden classics, Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot ¯ and Harold Pinter's No Man's Land, ¯ ¦For sheer laughs per minute, these two stars deliver the goods as if they were instead performing a farce ¦that light touch works for Godot, ¯ it ultimately becomes a distraction in No Man's Land. ¯ McKellen and Stewart, who spend more time looking at the audience than at each other, are stars because they show us their formidable technique. They don't make acting look easy. We see all the effort, all the comic setting up. They signal what they're about to do, which can make the pay off a lot of fun. McKellen mines laughs in No Man's Land ¯ where none exist. Audiences may find that his verbal and physical dexterity makes for a lighter, more digestible night at the theater, but it also diminishes the desperation that drives Spooner, a down-and-out poet, into the no man's land of another writer's well-appointed, servant-infested manse. McKellen is all calculation and almost no angst; while Spooner may offer his host Hirst (Stewart) a glimpse of greater awareness, he is also painfully aware that man cannot live on poetry alone."
Village Voice - Recommended
"... ¦under Sean Mathias's direction, neither piece offers a particularly incisive interpretation of the script. Despite some invigorating line readings, these plays exist less to celebrate the words on the page and more to enable the mutual gratification of actors Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, whose delight in performance infects the audience like a virus of sheer jubilation. No Man's Land is a troubling play about aging and infirmity. It has its lighter moments, like a lavishly dirty speech about cricket and another about floral arrangements. But it can and should produce a profoundly destabilizing effect, as certainties melt away like ice in a scotch glass. Yet the Cort audience greeted even the most frightening lines with titters ¦The laughter leaches the play of its threat and its power."
Financial Times - Recommended
"......New York has been awash in Beckett and Pinter, brought to us by Great English Actors. None of these productions has represented the performers at their peak ¦the routines now seem so worked-out they're stiff. No Man's Land...which is playing in rep with Godot, exhibits similar tendencies. Though McKellen's voice, deep and supple, is always a pleasure to hear live, his physical movement seems as calculated as a Hollywood action sequence. The sole McKellen moment in this two-act evening, directed by Sean Mathias, that made me purr came when his character, Spooner, appeared to slip while getting up: spontaneity at last. As Hirst, the successful littĆ©rateur to McKellen's down-and-out poet, Stewart has fewer occasions for bravura. To elicit audience reaction "and, to be fair, my audience seemed plenty pleased by the play "he put a master bowler's spin on almost all the lines involving drink. As for the play itself ¦I find new things in it upon each listening. Its deliberate obtuseness can be frustrating ¦But, as with most of Pinter, the act of enjoyment trumps the act of understanding. I only wish I had found a bit more enjoyment in this production."
New Jersey Newsroom - Highly Recommended
"...Two tricky modern dramas, No Man's Land ¯ and Waiting for Godot ¯...Performed in repertory, both plays are surprisingly staged by director Sean Mathias with an emphasis on their underlying humor. In either case it is a pleasure to see McKellen and Stewart confidently share a wonderful rapport in the give-and-take of their performances, while Billy Crudup and Shuler Hensley provide able support in other roles. By briskly exploiting the wit that infuses Harold Pinter's typically enigmatic No Man's Land ¯ the director and his actors conversely bring its lovely poetic language into greater relief. The less familiar work ¦observes two poets in their 60s who may or may not be longtime frenemies ¦Expect no story to emerge here but rather a wintry study of souls dwelling in the twilight zone of their later lives ¦the dapper Stewart gives Hirst an implacable gravity that contrasts well with the intricacy of McKellen's bravura performance as the garrulous Spooner. A menacing Hensley and a jaunty Crudup effectively depict Hirst's not-so-subservient servants."
Talkin Broadway - Recommended
"...In both Harold Pinter's No Man's Land and especially Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot ¦ Ian McKellen...and Patrick Stewart...obliterate any preconceptions you may have about the ravages of age while reinforcing through the productions that no one is immune from them. That these messages can coexist without the merest hint of contradiction is the greatest achievement of both mountings...Gravity's downward pull is strongest in No Man's Land, which in this rendering is an unavoidable exploration of death: of the soul, of the mind, and of the body. Whereas Godot's pseudo-vaudevillian demands free McKellen and Stewart to explore and invent, here they're more constrained by Pinter's methodical meting out of details. But they break no new ground ¦You get what's necessary and little more. But you don't leave the theater either time feeling as though you've had a titanic, once-in-a-lifetime experience. These are top professionals, onstage and off, working at the top of their games without transcending the careers that have preceded them or the plays they're presenting."
The Independent - Highly Recommended
"...These two exquisite productions, in serving up profound mediations on reality, loneliness, rivalry and mortality, make a compelling case for the ways that theatre can shed light on the human condition. And what fun that Stewart and McKellen-wonderfully directed by Sean Mathias-have along the way. The pair are close friends but their terrific onstage dynamic never lapses into ostentatious chumminess. No Man's Land manages to outshine a very good Godot. Both McKellen and Stewart brilliantly immerse themselves into complicated characters. McKellen shifts Spooner from a swaggering elitist- confidently describing himself at the outset as a man of intelligence and perception ¯-to a degenerate shambles. Stewart's Hirst, a rich poet crippled by alcoholism, is by turns pathetic and powerful. Mathias' production expertly captures the poetry contained in Pinter's psychological study of both sides of the creative coin being consumed by struggle and failure, trapped in a No Man's Land which never moves, which never changes, which never grows older, but which remains forever icy and silent ¯."
Broadway World - Highly Recommended
"...It isn't often that, when paired with another play, Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot is considered the more accessible piece, but Harold Pinter's obtuse little attraction, No Man's Land ¦has inspired its share of "What does it mean?" inquiries. Director Sean Mathias and his talented quartet of actors ¦do lovely service to both of them. No big bangs and ¦ just a solidly acted pair of straightforward mountings that...serve the playwrights very well. Tensions rise in No Man's Land, Pinter's 1975 work that's lesser-known on these shores. The odd situation, which mixes fact and fiction and questions if it even matters which is which, casts the primary pair as literary colleagues turned rivals. Having met earlier in the evening at a London pub, the well-to-do Hirst (smugly elegant Stewart) has invited the disheveled but crafty Spooner (a chatty McKellen) to his home for several nightcaps. A poet who has seen better days, Spooner gets by on charming others with his wit, but as the drinks flow freer and the conversation gets more personal, he may be in over his head."
