Sunday, June 10, 2007 - a day to embrace uncertainty. The least of my worries, as I await the matinee of "No Man’s Land" at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA, is that I won't grasp the meaning of Harold Pinter’s play.
Pinter is the heavyweight champion playwright of pauses, loose context, and ambiguity. I realize I’m in over my head going in. If everyone’s candid, I’m not alone with this line of thought. One of the only things generally agreed upon is that age and mortality are what’s on Pinter’s mind in "No Man’s Land". How appropriate for today.
I’m not worried about being boxed out by Harold Pinter this afternoon. No. My main concern is what’s going to happen to Tony Soprano tonight. I know that I’m not alone here, either. The average viewer-ship of every “The Sopranos” HBO episode is between 10 and 12 million people. Tonight is the last episode - ever.
I’m not worried that I’ll feel intellectually inadequate here. I’m taking comfort that I know ahead of time that Pinter leaves holes in the plot big enough to drive one of Tony’s waste management trucks through. I can embrace ambiguity on the stage. The uncertainty about Tony's fate is what gnaws at me.
Tonight, Tony Soprano is in No Man’s Land. Death looms. His inner circle, goombahs like grim-faced Silvio and man-child Bobby, has been whacked. Tony is in hiding. He's never seemed so vulnerable.
Tony can’t seem to escape his DNA. For every step forward toward a moral life, he’s made several backward. The alpha dog in him won't die - but Tony might tonight.
I know why I care about some of Pinter’s characters. Why do I care about Tony? He's an emotionally stunted bully. So why do I keep rooting for him to show me that he’s “basically a good guy,” as he’s told his therapist Dr Melfi? I want to believe in redemption for Tony - and by extension - for me. Tonight I get the answer.
As I write this note to myself just before Pinter’s play begins at 2 pm, I can hear the stonecutters tool boring into polished stone. I can see a slab of granite resting atop the fresh soil over Tony’s cold, dead body. As one of Pinter’s characters will say in the play, “There’s a place in the soul where no human being can trespass.”
What has Tony’s self-insulation into No Man’s Land cost him? What does it cost any of us? Trust or trespass? Love or rejection? Life or death? Tony finds out tonight. The rest of us have to wait.
Comments