Word: pinter
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...HAROLD PINTER'S Old Times is an unimpeachable dramatic gem. Precisely its gem-like qualities--hardness, multi-faceted symmetry, elegant economy of design, deep translucence--can easily displease an audience unaccustomed to them. But those who come to the Loeb Ex, tonight or Saturday, with open eyes and a willingness to work a bit will be rewarded for their efforts...
...Times, Pinter reshapes the archetypes central to his work. In different ways, Deeley and Kate each fight to maintain their huddled numbness against incursions from the outside world, from the past, from the primal depths of their own subconscious. The catalyst of the conflict is Ann, Kate's companion of twenty years before. Anna brings a history heavy with menace, to upset the poor balance that Deeley and Kate had achieved through silence, and pierce their protective anaesthesia. Characteristically, Pinter leaves the true nature of the past events clouded in uncertainty--he himself does not claim to know exactly what...
Much of the play's difficulty lies in its refinement. In Pinter's earlier plays, such as The Homecoming, the conflicts are manifested in awful acts of passion, power, and violence. The struggles in Old Times are as profound, as wrenching as ever; only, they are not so violent. They are enacted on a more poetic plane, and words are the chosen weapons. Pinter now knows that he can say what he wants to without raising his voice...
This is not to say that Old Times is undramatic. Pinter's, and his characters', absorption with words may supersede movement to a great extent, but the ebb and flow of psychic combat are clearly and forcefully embodied in the interaction. Psychological climaxes are not merely talked about--they take place before...
This psychic violence gathers beneath a fine membrane of civility. Remarkably, Pinter succeeds in creating a fabric of conversation that contains and covers the anxieties and animosities, without ever concealing them. Subtly, urbanely, the characters bring these elemental passions to the surface in the guise of recollections, much in the same way that instincts take form in the symbols of dreams. But this delicate control is tenuous, and the volcanic passions can erupt with dreadful impact at any time. When this happens, the damage is, as Pinter says, "irrevocable...