"Bill Davis’ Smoking Gun Collective production of No Man’s Land offers a classic evening of one of Harold Pinter’s densest, most obscure “comedies of menace.” When Hirst (Jack Rigg) brings an apparent stranger, Spooner (William B. Davis), back to his elegant home—a kind of existential haunted house—the two engage in an oblique battle of wits, threats, and one-upmanship. Hirst’s servants, Foster (Chris Walters) and Briggs (John Prowse), provide additional muscle, but Spooner holds his own through alternating power moves and craven abjection. Poet Spooner’s insistence at the end that “the subject will never be changed” (make of that what you will) suggests a stalemate in the power dynamics. No one wins, nothing is resolved, but the audience goes home having experienced Pinter at his most … well … Pinteresque.

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            The show offers strong acting and as clear a staging of Pinter as you’ll probably ever see. What impressed me most was 83-year-old Davis’ ability to handle pages full of Pinter dialogue, much of it non sequitur, with barely a hiccup of hesitation. Along with fellow octogenarian F. Murray Abraham’s stellar work in the current season of The White Lotus, Davis’ performance is an eloquent counter to the ageism actors face in theatre, TV and film."

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Jerry Wasserman

www.vancouverplays.com

December 5, 2022