SUMMARY

The play begins with married couple Kate and Deeley smoking cigarettes and
discussing Kate's old friend Anna, who is coming to visit them. Kate says that Anna
was her only friend, but Anna had many friends. Deeley says he's never met Anna,
and is surprised to hear that Kate and Anna roomed together 20 years ago. Kate says
that Anna occasionally stole her underwear.
In the next scene, Anna arrives, talking incessantly about the fun times she and Kate
shared in their youth. Kate says very little. Deeley talks about his past as a sailor and
tells Anna that he first met Kate at a movie, and asked her out for coffee afterwards.
Anna's rebuttal is a story about her time living with Kate, when she came home to
find Kate sitting in silence while a young man sat in their arm chair crying. Anna
couldn't see his face because his hand was covering it while he cried. Neither of them
said anything to her, so she awkwardly went to bed. Kate went to bed as well, and the
man continued to sob in the darkness for a while before getting up and walking over
to Anna's bed. He stared at her for a while, but she ignored him. He then went to
Kate's bed and lay across her lap, and then he left. Anna emphasizes to Deeley that
she ignored the man because she would have nothing to do with him. Kate neither
confirms nor denies either of their stories, and eventually decides to take a bath.
While Kate is taking her bath, Deeley confronts Anna, telling her that he's met her
before. He says she used to dress in black and get men to buy her drinks, and he fell
for it, buying her a drink 20 years ago and going with her to party. They sat across the
room from each other, and he looked up her skirt. A girl sat beside her and they
talked, while Deeley was surrounded by men and lost track of the girls. When he got
through the crowd to the couch where the girls had sat, they were gone. Anna
pretends to have no idea what he's talking about, and he insists that she was trying to
be Kate back then, mimicking her mannerisms and shy smile, but she wasn't as good
at it.
Kate returns in her bathrobe, and the two compete for her attention, while she
consistently says practically nothing. Eventually Anna admits that she once wore
Kate's underwear to a party where a man rudely stared up her skirt. She goes on to
Deeley that Kate always lent her underwear, asking her to wear it all the time. Kate
says nothing, but when prompted to confirm or deny their stories, she says to Anna, "I
remember you dead." Kate then goes on to describe how Anna had been dead in bed,
covered in dirt, and how her body was gone when a man arrived. She told the man
that no one slept in the extra bed, and he lay in it, thinking Kate would sleep with him.
Instead, she nearly suffocated him with mud from the flower pot by the window, and
his response was a proposal of marriage.

ACTS
In the beginning they are all on-stage, although Anna is in dim light. Deeley and Kate are
married and awaiting the arrival of Anna, an old friend of Kate's. Her only friend she says.
Deeley is curious. Anna arrives from her volcanic island where her husband remains in a
white dinner jacket. She and Deeley speak while Kate becomes vague-er and vague-er. She
relates the old times, when she and Kate were room-mates in London, rushing off to art
events and working as secretaries. She and Deeley sing snatches of old songs back and
forth. Kate goes to take a bath.
In the second act, Anna and Deeley are present. They continue the reminsce with shifts.
Deeley claims to remember Anna, fragments of what Kate has related to Deeley return in
Anna's mouth with shifted meanings. Kate emerges from the bath, relating her happiness
about the country, how soft it is. The vying for dominance of memory in the room takes a
turn, things are sexually charged in an indeterminable way and Kate relates a memory of
Anna dead in their room, covered with dirt. Her body disappeared and Kate brought Deeley
home, wanting to cover him with dirt - instead they got married. Silence falls. Each
character finds a chair to rest on, Deeley shifts around. Black out

LANGUAGE
Absurdity, the self-conscious use of language - characters commenting on words that they
don't hear often, misunderstanding the object of sentences, using strange constructions.
The careful placement of pauses, of stage directions, of laughter - that seems menacing
though I'm not sure why. All this is what makes it Pinters. When I read him I rush through
then go back. I am worried someone will be killed, someone will attack, no one does in this
play at least. That feeling of dream permeates it though - as well as absurdity, but it's not
funny.
How? How does is this acheived? a combination of detailed, slightly off monologues with the
rigid, deliberate dialogue. The sense of things being said in an echo chamber, silence all
around them, a cold space. The feeling that anyone could be lying, and that everyone
probably is - but it's all amongst such normal activity. They've made a casserole for a
visitor, what if she's vegetarian? Is she married? Why doesn't she bring her husband? These
opening questions turn into - why does she space out like that? Is she ill? Is she dead? Does
her husband have an on-going affair with this old friend? Are they humoring the wife? The
slipperiness and dead creepiness of memory sneak in and no explanations are forth coming,
for a moment there's a sense of releif after Kate finally starts to speak. But she doesn't
really explain anything and in fact is pretty disturbing, and her husband starts to weep, and
no one says anything

CRITICAL OPINION
The play reveals the undeclared psychological warfare that results when the
enigmatic Anna (Rene L. Pastel 09) visits her old roommate, Kate (Julia L.
Renaud 09), and Kates husband, Deeley (Daniel R. Pecci 09). As the two women
reminisce about old times, questions are raised about the nature of memory and
the relationships between the three characters. Deeley and Anna engage in a
battle over who really possesses Kate, using language and recollections as their
weapons of choice.
Old Times contains many of Pinters trademarks as a playwright: uncertainty,
an unspoken struggle for verbal control, sexual tension, questions with no
answers, and an exploration of the nature of memory. These characteristics make
Pinters work wonderfully frustrating and absorbing, but at the same time create
difficulties for the director, who must clearly convey the central ideas despite an
often indiscernible reality
Old Times is a difficult show to stage, and this production doesnt succeed in
overcoming all of the plays challenges. However, in the end, its impossible to
completely obscure Pinters message about the imprecise nature of human
memory. Questions are ultimately more important to understanding the play
than definite answers. Pastel, Pecci, and Renaud have presented an experience; it
is up to the audience to parse the subtleties in order to find personal meaning in
Pinters work. Old Times works mostly because of the strong writing. While the
three do a passable job at interpreting Pinters work, perhaps they should fold up
the directors chairs for the time being.