Julian Sands, 'A Celebration of Harold Pinter'

British actor Julian Sands is a veteran of stage, film, and television, perhaps best known for his breakout role as the romantic lead in the 1985 Merchant Ivory film A Room with a View. In 2005, Sands had the pleasure of meeting Nobel Prize-winning playwright, poet, and political activist Harold Pinter, an artist later eulogized as 'the most influential, provocative, and poetic dramatist of his generation' (The Guardian). When the two artists decided to collaborate in preparing a set of Pinter's poems for a London performance, a lasting friendship was born. Pinter's work with Sands is the subject of a poignant and unsettlingly funny solo show, written and performed by Sands and directed by John Malkovich. Sands assumes the role of the prickly-but-charming Pinter, reciting poems, chiding the audience, and ruminating on his status as a literary legend. The New York Times raves, '[Sands] embodies the notion of the actor as a transparent vessel through which we see the thoughts and feelings of others.'