Nick Ahad: Passion, politics and a performance that brings Pinter’s words to vivid life

We are in one of the many bars of the Pleasance Courtyard at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and it is little surprise that perspiration is dripping from his forehead – he has just delivered a powerhouse of a performance to a lunchtime audience of his one man show, A Celebration of Harold Pinter.

We’re propping up the bar – it’s barely after noon, but that’s the way of the Fringe – and Sands clearly takes a little time to come down after a performance. He cuts a broad and impressive figure and most eyes in the pub are on him. Those that aren’t, quickly turn to him when he opens his mouth and requests his drink in a booming baritone.

It is the same voice that has, during the previous hour, mesmerised a sell-out audience with a recital of Pinter’s poetry. During the performance, between the often surprising poems, Sands related anecdotes about the master playwright, some his own, some told to him by others, including Pinter’s widow Lady Antonia Fraser.

After watching the show and while waiting for Sands to make his entrance at the Pleasance Courtyard bar I took to Twitter to announce that his recital of Pinter’s poem, “I saw Len Hutton in his prime. Another time, another time,” was worth the price of admission alone – and I still think it was.

The show is as simple as it is affecting. Sands, a book of Pinter’s poetry, his voice and his presence are all that is needed. Of course the ticket sales are helped by the fact that Hollywood legend John Malkovich is the director (and was handing out flyers on the Royal Mile the day before this particular performance).

“John and I were going for a man in a pool of moonlight, bearing his soul to the moon. That was the sense we wanted,” says Sands. If that was the aim, they can consider it mission accomplished.

Every year in Edinburgh there is the production that has star quality and becomes the Fringe’s big attraction. Christian Slater in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 2004 and Eddie Izzard in The Sweeney last year. This year Simon Callow was appearing on the Fringe, as was Art Malik, alongside his daughter.

There was no doubt, however, that the combined star quality of Sands and Malkovich made A Celebration of Pinter the show that most wanted to get a ticket for – hence the long queues, in the rain, to get through the door of one of the bigger auditoriums of the Fringe.

“The beauty of the show is that it can be quite small and intimate, but if it’s been raining and everyone’s sitting there all soggy, you have to be a bit more of a hairdryer and really blast it out,” says Sands.

The Yorkshire-born actor, who grew up in Gargrave, near Skipton, went to drama school in London, where most of the training revolved around a career in theatre.

It was on the stage where he took his first acting steps, but once he had been given a taste of the movies, that was it.

He was cast in Roland Joffe’s multi-Oscar winning 1984 film The Killing Fields, which was where he first worked – and became friends with – John Malkovich.

The success of the film, which told the story of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, convinced Sands that his future lay not on the stage, but on the screen. The following year he appeared as Helena Bonham Carter’s love interest in the Merchant Ivory production of A Room With A View, prompting a permanent move by the actor to Hollywood.

In his mid-twenties at the time, he went on to appear in movies including Warlock, Leaving Las Vegas and the controversial Boxing Helena. He also played the role of Superman’s father in the TV series Smallville.

The Pinter show is Sands’s first return to the stage in a number of years and its seeds were sown back in 2005, before the Nobel Laureate’s death, when Pinter was due to give a poetry recital at a charity event. Too ill to attend, he asked Sands whether he would like to step in. The offer came with a condition: Sands would have to work with Pinter personally on the recital.

The 53-year-old actor’s eyes widen at the very thought.

He tells a story during the show about how, one day, he had been preparing for a rehearsal when he spotted a grammatical error in one of the poems. When he raised the point the following day with Pinter, well, I don’t want to spoil the story for those who will hear it at the Bradford Alhambra and Hull Truck this weekend, but let’s just say that you will hear the poem the way Pinter intended it.

What is it like coming back to the stage after such a break?

“It felt like being let off a leash,” says Sands, halfway through his pint of Guinness and beginning to find his “inside voice” again. “You feel like a giant. There is no room for timidity, you have to go out there with complete belief... I mean, there is humility there as well, I’m not out to dominate the audience, but I have to go out there with the absolute belief in the reason why you are there and that is to be a delivery system for this material.”

So, to the material.

The Pinter pause, which gets a mention and even an explanation in the show, is much in evidence. As are the politics and the coruscating intellect of one of theatre’s greatest-ever writers. What might come as a surprise to audiences is the amount of love, warmth and affection that comes through the poetry.

“What people don’t expect is the tenderness, humanity and compassion. The wit comes as no surprise at all, but the poems that are full of love for his widow, Lady Antonia, are extraordinarily intimate,” says Sands. “In fact, she has been to see the show and I have spoken with her and sometimes it’s a little embarrassing because when I am reading his work, I feel so intimately this great love that he celebrates for her.”

When Pinter passed away in 2008, Sands was in Los Angeles and as there was nothing being staged in honour of the writer, he decided to repeat the performance of the poetry.

His friend Malkovich couldn’t make the performance so asked for an audio recording. It was, Sands says, a revelation to his fellow actor. Malkovich has appeared in and directed Pinter’s work, but, like many, was unfamiliar with his poetry.

Malkovich holds famously right-wing views and is deeply politicised. Perhaps the only artist in his field that could match his political intellect was Pinter – albeit approaching the world from as far to the other end of the spectrum as you could get.

“Yes, of course their politics are very different, but what I think Harold and John have in common is their intelligence,” he says.

“It has been a joy working on this production with John.”

When the production arrives in Yorkshire this weekend, coming to Bradford on Saturday and Hull on Sunday, it will be in an expanded version from the single hour Sands was presenting in Edinburgh.

It will be a return to his roots and he is hopeful the show will benefit from a little home advantage.

“There was a famous day when me and my four brothers played cricket for Gargrave and they all still live in the area, so I’m hoping there will be some kind of show of support when I get up there,” he says.

He’s finished his Guinness. He has stopped declaiming and he’s stopped sweating. It’s time for him to exit the stage.

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