Show Pics: Walliams & Gambon Land in West End

Little Britain star David Walliams (pictured) makes his West End debut later this month, starring alongside Michael Gambon in Rupert Goold’s new production of Harold Pinter’s 1975 modern classic No Man’s Land. The production is currently running at Dublin’s Gate Theatre (21 August to 20 September 2008), before opening on 7 October at London’s Duke of York’s (previews from 27 September), where it’s initially booking until 3 January 2009.

First seen in 1975, No Man’s Land concerns a wealthy Hampstead aesthete, Hirst (Gambon), who meets a shabby and penniless poet, Spooner, and invites him home for a late-night session of drinking and games, overseen by his henchmen, Briggs and Foster (Walliams). Since its premiere at the National, its major London revivals have included a 1992 Almeida production, which starred Pinter and transferred to the West End, and a 2001 production, directed by Pinter and starring Corin Redgrave and John Wood, back at the NT.

Walliams and Gambon are joined in the cast of this new production by David Bradley (who was in another production of Pinter’s The Caretaker, with Nigel Harman last year The Quiz) as Spooner and Irish actor Nick Dunning (Briggs).

Director Rupert Goold is a busy man of late, with his production of Pirandello’s reworked Six Characters in Search of An Author also transferring to the West End later this month (See News, 4 Aug 2008). On top of this, he was recently made an associate director of the RSC and, in December, helms Cameron Mackintosh’s revival of Oliver! at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane.

– by Theo Bosanquet