In 'Old Times,' the present registers uncertain past

COURTESY BRANFORD SUDLER FUND

Harold Pinter once remarked, "The past is not past. It is present. I know the future is simply going to be the same thing. It'll never end. You carry all the states with you until the end." Old Times, directed by Vanessa Wolf, BR '01, and produced by Liz Kukura, PC '01, boldly emphasizes this seamlessness between the past, the present and the future.

At the commencement of the play, the characters proceed on stage in blackness, lit only by the moving path of their cigarettes, and following some nostalgic musical standards played before the curtain. The audience watches the three characters, Deeley (Giacomo DiGrigoli, DC '99), Kate (Ginny Smith, TC '02), and Anna (Megan O'Sullivan, PC '01) debate and reshape memories of their youth in London over the course of an evening spent together. Kate awaits a visit from her oldest friend, Anna, for the first time in 20 years.

The lights rise on the reticent Kate as she waits with her inquisitive husband, unwilling to recall past times shared with Anna. Deeley, on the other hand, can barely contain a string of questions about the expected guest, whom he has never met. Anna arrives and the evening unfolds, revealing unseen dimensions to the experiences which had delineated the course of their lives.

Wolf's direction highlights the manner in which Pinter's characters view their memories, and her actors respond quite admirably. Deeley and Anna battle for mastery of their past, arguing through the details of language, whether one did something "every so often" or "more often than not," and so forth.

Their words mold their memories of old haunts and past lives. Deeley and Anna triumph in the details, recalling how much sugar they took in their coffee, remembering exactly where they sat at a movie, identifying a particular smile. Many of Old Times' most striking moments occur because of these details, which range from foreboding to incongruously funny.

Anna even claims to remember things which never have happened and tells stories about things which only occur in her imaginings of the past. Only Kate, played entrancingly by Smith, refuses to discuss these bits and pieces, and exists in a quiet state of self-possession as her friend and her husband compete for a prevailing view of what happened in the past.

Old Times deserves honorable mention for valiantly coping with the spatial constraints of Nick Chapel, a black box space with limited seating and technical options. The production used few set pieces and generally uncomplicated ones.

During the first act, furniture draped in white offsets the walls; a coffee table and an endtable held emblems of telltale vices: a cigarette chest, a flask of brandy, a lighter. A projection of a window defined the fourth wall. The set for the second act was not as streamlined as that of the first (the beds seemed dishearteningly Yale-issued and extra-long, no matter how I looked at them), but served its function extremely well.

Pinter plays, well-known for rich, echoing dialogue amidst weighty pauses (as opposed to pauses amidst dialogue), work best when the set is a bit spartan--as it was here, with a few telling visual details. In this sense, the generous space of Nick Chapel works well for this play, because it mandates tight stage pictures and limited sprawl.

The close of the play brings a surprise. Deeley's and Anna's definitive accounts of old times turn to powder, as they realize that their stories intersect in a way which entirely alters the past as they knew it. Deeley and Anna (who had been singing "They Can't Take That Away From Me" moments earlier) realize that their ideas of the past have shattered. Kate triumphs in her complacence. Wolf's production of Old Times succeeds in this manner; her characters successfully reveal the interdependence of human events as the incidents of a supposedly static past change and rearrange before the characters' eyes.

Old Times opened with few glitches along with much elegance, and it will leave its audiences wondering for hours where their own lives intersect with those of the people they see every day.

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