Rating: NNNNN
Peter does Pinter
NO MAN’S LAND by Harold Pinter. Opens tonight (July 10) and runs in rep through August 23. See openings, this page. Look for theatrical sparks to fly in Soulpepper ‘s season opener, Harold Pinter ‘s No Man’s Land . Not only is it a dramatically charged piece, but it also features two of Canada’s premier senior actors, William Hutt and Peter Donat . Hutt is known for his many years at the Stratford Festival, while Nova Scotia-born Donat’s made an impressive mark in several Soulpepper shows. In the company’s superb first production, Schiller’s Don Carlo, he gave a towering performance as the tortured King Philip, jealous of the relationship between his new wife and his son. Next season Donat returned as the blind, demanding Hamm in Beckett’s Endgame.
Donat’s decades-long career includes Broadway, Stratford and film, though many know him best as Fox Mulder’s father on The X-Files. He brings a strong presence and resonant voice to the Pinter production, in which he plays Hirst, a well-to-do author who invites a beggarly poet – Hutt – he’s just met at a pub back home for drinks. Do the two share a past? Who’s really in control here? Pinter’s enigmatic script is alternately comic and dead serious, and Donat and Hutt are sure to do justice to parts created by British stage greats Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud.
