FOLLOWING their hit run on Broadway, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart return to the West End stage in Harold Pinter’s No Man's Land, which will be broadcast live to the Adam Smith Theatre, in Kirkcaldy, on Thursday January 12 from Wyndham’s Theatre, London.

One summer's evening, two ageing writers, Hirst and Spooner, meet in a Hampstead pub and continue their drinking into the night at Hirst's stately house nearby.

As the pair become increasingly inebriated, and their stories increasingly unbelievable, the lively conversation soon turns into a revealing power game, further complicated by the return home of two sinister younger men.

Also starring Owen Teale and Damien Molony, don’t miss this glorious revival of Pinter’s comic classic.

The broadcast will be followed by an exclusive Q&A with the cast and director Sean Mathias.

The beauty of Pinter’s play is that it is open to many interpretations.

On the surface, it looks simple enough. Spooner, a minor versifier and pub potman, is invited back into the luxurious Hampstead pad of a famous writer, Hirst.

But, while the wheedling Spooner seeks to ingratiate himself with his heavy-drinking host, he finds himself blocked by Hirst’s intimidating manservants, Briggs and Foster. Gradually the tone shifts as Spooner seeks to re-ignite Hirst’s creative imagination and stir his memories. The attempt fails as Hirst seems trapped forever in an unyielding no man’s land which serves as an anteroom to death.

This contains some of Pinter’s most virtuosic writing and shows the two actors at their best. Stewart radiates ebullient smugness as he claims to have seduced Spooner’s wife.

At first McKellen reacts with slack-jawed dismay but, slowly realising this is some clubman’s fantasy, picks up on the rules of the game. When he reveals he was enthusiastically fellated by one of Hirst’s closest female friends, a smile of triumph spreads across McKellen’s seamed features as he crosses his legs in satisfaction.