Programme Cover - Haymarket
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Old Times, Theatre Royal, Haymarket,
London, April 1985, transferred to Theatre Royal, Bath
Kate - Nicola Pagett
Deeley - Michael Gambon
Anna - Liv Ullmann
Directed by David Jones
Designer - Timothy O'Brien
Lighting - David Hersey
Elegy to vanished pubs and old songs
by Irving Wardle
Not seen in London since its first appearance in
1971, Old Times is the most accessible of Harold Pinterís
full-length plays, and an obvious candidate for West End revival.
The chance has been seized to the full by David Jones and it is
a pleasure to welcome the return of this beautiful piece, scrupulously
directed and played by a crack company (Nicola Pagett, Michael Gambon,
Liv Ullman).
With most of Pinterís work, whatever its impact,
its point of origin resists speculation. But anyone looking back
to days of unattached youth in a big city can share in this playís
point of departure. It is an elegy to vanished pubs and old songs,
to dated slang and disappearing stocking-tops; to the faces that
turned up at parties and then dispersed, and to casual erotic encounters
that remain to excite the fantasy years after the faces and names
are forgotten.
Pinter winds up his first act song medley
with the line, ëHow the ghost of you clingsí; and his way of opening
up the past is to allow a ghost that has haunted a marriage to invade
the present after a lapse of 20 years.
Programme Cover - Bath
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In their converted farmhouse far from the London
of their youth, Kate and Deeley await a visit from Anna, Kateís
old flat mate from her secretarial days. Deeley pumps her for details
of the friendship, and gets the information that Anna used to take
her underclothes. It would be a conventional exposition, but for
the shadowy figure of Anna, presiding over the marriage whether
physically present or not.
With her actual arrival the lights go up and
the stage comes into normal focus as Anna launches into a flood
of secretarial reminiscences. But under cover of her gushing recollections
of home cooking and cultural outings, the three figures are taking
up new positions in the game. Deeley is stealthily fixing his attention
on Anna; Anna is moving in for the repossession of Kate; while Kate
withdraws behind a barrier of silent impenetrable charm.
What emerges through the haze of gossip and
drinks, is that Kate is an unattainable figure to whom the two others
lay claim; and that in talking over the old times they are reactivating
a rivalry that has lain dormant since their youth. The working-out
of this deeply private contest is conducted largely with public
weapons: old songs, old movies, addresses in Londonís bed-sit land
of the 1950s. Deeley claims to have picked Kate up at a matinee
of Odd Man Out, only to be challenged a few minutes later
when Anna declares that Kate first saw it in her company. Th rivals
discuss her bathroom habits almost like parents, or ex-spouses.
And from the stories of the borrowed underwear, it emerges that
Deeley sees the two women as inseparable parts of the same fantasy,
from which he is as hopelessly excluded now as 20 years before.
The company play these evasions, contradictory
memories, sudden spasms of anger, and moments of muted challenge
with full command of highly charged content. Miss Pagett, isolated
behind silence and dazzling smiles, makes decisive entries into
the conversation to prove she is the strongest figure in the group.
Mr Gambon wonderfully combines the roles of
genial host, furtive lecher (sitting down next to Anna while demonstrating
half a dozen ways of not quite touching her), and punctuating the
small-talk with bull-like roars of jealousy and frustration, before
abjectly collapsing between the two women. Miss Ullman, vocally
less sensitive than her partners, is visually astonishing; first
appearing as a hearty middle-aged woman, and shedding years to revoke
the odalisque of Deeleyís memory. It is also clear that she, no
less than Deeley, is trying to exorcise a ghost.
The Times, Thursday, 25th April 1985
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