By Peter Maddern
Old Times, one of Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter’s ‘memory plays’ brings together happily married Kate (Charlotte Rose) and Deeley (Marc Clement) in their well-appointed London flat with Anna (Rachael Wegener), someone who lived with Anna twenty years before.
There, the trio tease and tease out memories of each other and their times together; some recalled better than others, same events noted for different reasons, others are stories that may reveal selves previously hidden. It’s as much plumbing the recesses of the minds as a battle of wits for some kind of rhetorical supremacy between them all.
Tony Knight’s direction elicits excellent performances for each of his cast, often moving his players around the floor like chess pieces as the tactical battle between their characters plays out. Mark Heuer’s stage is deceptively simple with the creative use of three large mirror or picture frames at its rear that keep characters removed from the immediate nonetheless imbedded in the view of the audience.
For such a short piece, the tension builds inexorably to its ambiguous conclusion with the intervention of Bryan Ferry a melodic treat.
Kryztoff Rating 3.5K
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