Broadway Theater Review: Old Times with Clive Owen

It’s Just Like Old Times – We Still Don’t Get This Play

By Lauren Yarger
Is she real? Are they both real? Were they both real at one time, but now dead and only in the imagination of the man?

These and other questions can be yours if you take in Roundabout Theatre Company’s Broadway revival of Harold Pinter’s Old Times. But the lack of comprehension isn’t the fault of this production, featuring film actor Clive Owen in his Broadway debut, Eve Best (from TV’s “Nurse Jackie”) and Kelly Reilly (the TV and film star also making her Broadway debut), all ably directed by Douglas Hodge (a premiere interpreter of Pinter’s plays).

It’s the play’s.

Owen is Deeley, a man looking forward to meeting Anna (Best), an old friend of his wife, Kate (Reilly) who is stopping by after many years. Kate doesn’t seem to remember a lot about Anna, despite the fact that they were roommates and that Anna used to borrow her underwear. When Anna shows up, things get even more confusing. It might have been Kate who instigated that underwear-sharing thing and Deeley might even have seen some of it prior to his marriage to Kate. He remembers meeting Anna one night at a tavern and looking up her skirt. Could that have been the underwear borrowed from his wife whom he later met at a movie?

Does anyone seriously care?

Meanwhile, it doesn’t take this 70-minute, one act play too long before it takes a Pinter-esque turn into cloudy territory. Soon, we’re not sure whose version of events is real, if anyone’s. Is it Anna’s sensual and humorous take? Is it Kate’s submissive and numb account or is it Deeley’s confused, desperate angst?

We didn’t know what the play was about 44 years ago when it premiered on Broadway and we still don’t, but people love to debate the possibilities. They all focus on memory and what parts of it are reliable. This play, in fact, is one of the playwrights series of  “memory plays."

 

“There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened,” Anna says. “There are things I remember which may never have happened but as I recall them, so they take place."

I won’t try to capture the elusive message here. No one has come up with any conclusions for decades and meanwhile, Pinter also was awarded Pulitzer and Nobel prizes for his enigmatic plays, so what do I know?

But I will tell you what I liked about this production. The performances are passionate. And the set! The sharp, looming hypnotic backdrop, designed by Christine Jones and expertly lighted by Japhy Weideman, takes us on a visual tour of the downward spiral these characters enter mentally, and metaphorically referred to as ripples on a pond (though it is hard to see anything at times through the haze of all the cigarette smoke generated by characters smoking through their angst). There’s a symbolic, very cool (no pun intended)  ice cube of a door too. Music by Thom Yorke adds to a haunting atmosphere, even if we don’t know exactly why we feel unsettled.

Old Times plays a limited engagement through Nov. 29 at the American Airlines Theatre, 227 West 42nd St. NYC. Performances are Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8 pm; Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday at 2 pm; Check for some schedule changes in November. Tickets: $67–$137; (212) 719-1300; www.roundabouttheatre.org.

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