Pinter’s Old Times: The Memory Game

Abstract

“Well, well, and they didn’t even take their clothes off!” As the curtain closed on a performance of Pinter’s Old Times at Guildford,¹ this was the first response that floated over to me across the auditorium. The tone was bewildered and somewhat aggrieved and, to a point, one could sympathize: there were two beds all ready, a mood of intense desire, and any number of sexual variations that had been suggested as a possible resolution to the situation. Yet the final tableau presented one woman lying stretched out on one bed, fully clothed; another woman sitting buddha-like on another bed, fully clothed; and one man sitting slumped and bowed over an armchair. In fact the remark pointed to more than taking off clothes; it raised the essential question of the play — what was it that had kept the audience in rapt attention for one and a half hours? In the bewilderment was a demand for some kind of certainty of action, but the play offered neither certainty nor action; only three people talking and disagreeing about their past in post-war London. This past was a time when Kate and Anna seemingly shared a flat together; when Kate and Deeley seemingly met for the first time; when Deeley met Anna at the Wayfarer’s Tavern just off the Brompton Road — or was it at a party in Westbourne Grove? Or both? One of the few things that the three of them seem to agree about is seeing Carol Reed’s film, Odd Man Out, in a fleapit in some obscure neighbourhood of London; but whether Deeley met Kate there at one time or Anna went there with Kate at another, or whether these two times were one time is really another matter altogether.