New York Review: OLD TIMES
By Toby Zinman
For the Inquirer
To borrow a great line from Harold Pinter's Homecoming: "You never heard such silence," and in this brilliant Broadway production of Pinter's Old Times, directed by Douglas Hodge, the silences are simply deafening.
The mysteries of memory, like the mysteries of marriage are the subjects of this elusive, tantalizing play but the great Sub-Texter himself, and this sleek and stylish British cast deepens the mysteries without ever solving them.
The plot seems straightforward enough: Deeley (Clive Owen) and his wife Kate (Kelly Reilly) are awaiting the arrival of Kate's old friend Anna (Eve Best). It has been twenty years since they were roommates in London, and Kate seems to remember very little about her. She arrives, wearing gorgeous decollate, and the level of subdued sexual menace grows as first the women spar with competing memories; then there is growing evidence that Deeley and Anna knew each other in the past. They duel by flinging lines from classic old songs at each other, most suggestively when Anna sings "The way you comb your hair..." and Deeley sings back, "Oh no they can't take that away from me...," and Pinter seems to silently add, "wanna bet?"
To borrow lyrics from Rogers and Hart:
Some things that happen for the first time,
Seem to be happening again.
And so it seems that we have met before, and
Laughed before, and loved before,
But who knows where or when!
It is also tantalizing that one of their disputed recollections involves going to the movies to see Odd Man Out, which is exactly what Deeley seems to be, but who knows where or when they saw that film.
If you're going to stage an intense, intimate play on a gigantic Broadway stage, make the size work. The spectacular set designed by Christine Jones perfectly eludes realism; a vast circular backdrop design is fronted by a large rectangle, sort of an ice sculpture that seems to be a window. There are two bed-like chaise longues and an arm chair for Deely. This is, clearly, nobody's living room. The characters are isolated in space, silenced in mid-sentence, while jokey moments of coffee-sipping in unison and legs flung over chair arms break the tension momentarily. Similarly, the eerie electronic music by Thom Yorke and a sound design by Clive Goodwin bolster the atmosphere of dis-ease.
Owen is sexy and swaggering and bewildered; Reilly, with her superb profile, is sexy and stern and unyielding; Best is sexy and opulent and, to use a word you don't hear much anymore, beguiling.
All told is this a great and unnerving production.
American Airlines Theatre, 42nd St. near 8th Ave.
