A strange and disturbing look at a couple hosting an old friend for dinner. The play runs more on what is not said than on what is said. Snippets of ideas presented, never quite completed, as the couples talk around whatever it is that was in their past. It starts off simply enough, but the conversation gets progressively weirder as the evening goes on, and at times appears to blur time itself. A fascinating work that stays with you long after you put it down. ( )

bookshelves: published-1971, winter-20132014, nobel-laureate, play-dramatisation, radio-3, fradio, midlife-crisis, mental-health, too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts, music, lifestyles-deathstyles
Recommended for: BBC Radio Listeners
Read from January 04 to 07, 2014

R3 Sun 5/1/14

BBC description: In a remote farmhouse, Deeley and Kate await a visitor. Anna is Kate's best friend, though Deeley has never met her. Is the past really as they remember it?

Old Times is a play about memory and desire. Tantalisingly enigmatic, it is a play about people in their forties looking back on old times, about reconciling the young person and the adult, about how you imagined things were going to be and how they turned out.

”I remember you dead.”

In this production, the BBC blanks out the inhalation, exhalation smoking sounds, and this play is FULL of cigarettes. ( )

From: Harold Pinter: Tense Memory Play Recalls Old Times
Old Times, Harold Pinter (1971)
http://wp.me/p14mpp-b3

The Stanford Summer Theater Production 2011
Harold Pinter's play Old Times opens with a medley of music standards of the 30s and 40s. Anna, the surprise guest, appears outside the farmhouse widow and slowly looks over the room. She moves to the second window and then walks into the room to position herself with her back to the audience looking out of the room. Deeley, the host, enters and walks across the stage to the armchair and sits. Kate, his wife of 20 years, enters and sits on the right divan, and says, reflectively, “Dark”. There is a pause before Deeley responds. This is an upsetting and mysterious way to begin a play, but it is an attention grabber—the normally restless Stanford audience was quiet. The play was off to a great start.

Pinter studied drama at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London and worked in repertory theatre in Ireland and England. In 1958 he wrote the following:

"There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false."

The play Old Times continues, Kate and Deeley discuss Kate's old friend Anna, who is, in fact, standing in the room. Kate volunteers reluctantly that Anna was her best friend, actually, her only friend. Deeley says he's never met Anna, and is surprised to hear that Kate and Anna shared the same bedroom 20 years ago. Kate remembers that Anna occasionally stole her underwear. This erotic theme will continue throughout the play

When Kate punched the word underwear, the Stanford audience chuckled, releasing the tension that had been building. Anna, who has been a silent presence, then turned from the window, took a seat on the second divan, and the play is off to a good start.

Anna’s opening speech evokes memories of the time that she shared with Kate, and it becomes clear that there is going to be competition for Anna's attention. Raising the question: Who will succeed, Kate or Deeley? The Stanford production continued without any scene breaks. The play was presented as written except for slight variations in the blocking at the beginning and end of the play.

This is a provocative play, full of pauses that allow reflection. A wonderful short play that is more acessable than many other modern or avant garde works for the theater.

Harold Pinter was a trained actor, and he played the roll of Deeley at The American Theater, USA in October 1985, and at the Henry Fonda Theater in November 1985. An extensive list of productions and reviews of performances is online at the Harold Pinter Organization web site.
http://www.haroldpinter.org/home/index.shtml

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Elusive and portentous. It's Pinter, after all. Not his best, to my mind, but it's difficult for me to put into words why this doesn't quite do it for me the way No Man's Land or The Homecoming does. Maybe if I were Pinter, I could express it better. ( )

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