No Man's Land

Oxford Playhouse

When one understudy has to stand in, it often proves a positive experience and inject new life into a play.

When two out of a four-man team are standing in for the main players the structure of the production can suffer.

Unfortunately, despite Corin Redgrave's gallant attempts to hold Pinter's No Man's Land together, when two roles were covered by understudies on the same night, that vital spark which brings a play such as this to life was missing.

I left the Oxford Playhouse feeling I had missed out on what could have been a quite remarkable production.

Hugh Fletcher stood in for John Wood -- who is due to return after illness tonight -- and played the old man Spooner, whom I had always believed to be a rather smelly individual who had been befriended at a pub by the well-heeled Hirst (Redgrave).

Once the two men arrive in Hirst's palatial home a Pinteresque conversation, with all those painful pauses and unexpected moments of mirth then begins. That's how I thought it should be, but what we got was a rather dapper and quite well groomed visitor who didn't look at all out of place in Hirst's manicured home. I had assumed he'd be scruffy and smell slightly; instead I got the feeling he'd applied aftershave and cleaned his teeth before coming on stage.

Gary Shelford, who played Foster (replacing Danny Dyer) was every bit the street-wise young man of the house. His sidekick, Briggs, (Andy de la Tour) and he worked well together attending to Hirst's needs, but not well enough.

Despite Shelford's youthful enthusiasm, that bonding and repartee one expects between players in a classic work such as this was missing.

The play comes out of the 1970s and is deemed difficult, but that's a challenge the National Theatre, which stages this production, is well qualified to take on. No doubt the original cast will return to reveal a thought-provoking play, which deserves the accolades bestowed upon it when it first hit the road in December.