Old Times
From 8 November 1999
To 13 November 1999
by Harold Pinter
Directors Notes
Working in rehearsal, the players have found the structure of "Old Times" baffling and mysterious. It has dream like quality, where characters make contradictory statements about each other, and give varying descriptions of past encounters. Are Kate and Anna separate characters or dual aspects of the same woman? Are all three characters dead and simply re-experiencing some past meeting? Certainly Deeley and Anna are engaged in a verbal, musical and physical battle over Kate, whose chilling incuriosity eventually gives way to a final ruthless demolition of both Anna and Deeley.
Memory on a variety of levels is the constant theme. Pinter suggests that the past is no more fixed than the present or the future. Memory can be fiction, which can take on the reality of fact, or while recollecting the past can create the future. Nothing is verifiable. What does finally emerge, no matter how many layers of meaning we have peeled off, is the central truth that human existence is essentially solitary: we are all locked within our own private thoughts.
The linguistic texture of the play serves to heighten the ephemeral nature of remembrance. Pinter's use of language and word-play moves away from the so called "realism" of his earlier work, while his well known "pauses" continue to exercise a powerful influence on the actor's interpretation of character and plot.