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# ‘Old Times’ is a timeless work
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/old-times-is-a-timeless-work/
- Published: 2008-03-15T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T23:41:47.000Z
- Author: Cynthia Citron
- Tags: Entertainment, Santa Monica, #archive-import

In my view, Harold Pinter is to theater as Salvador Dali is to art. Both are merchants of memory. It is not by chance that Dali’s most famous work, the melting pocket watches dripping off a table and draped on the branches of a barren tree, is called “The Persistence of Memory.” Similarly, Pinter’s works (some 29 plays, reams of poems, screenplays, speeches, et al) are fixated on the vagaries of memory. As Pinter has said, “The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend you remember.” And both artists’ works are, uncompromisingly, what you make of them as they meld with your own body of memories.

And so we have “Old Times,” a quirky little play in which three people whose lives have been intertwined try to sort out their mutual memories. Director John Pleshette has mounted this 1971 Pinter play in a fine new production at The Lost Studio in Hollywood.

Dan Cowan plays Deeley, a peripatetic film director whose work often takes him away from his rural home and his enigmatic wife. Cecelia Specht plays the wife, Kate, with a vacant stare, a vast indifference, and smothering silences, which Deeley tries relentlessly to penetrate.

Their mostly monosyllabic exchanges are ruptured by the boisterous arrival of Anna (Cerris Morgan-Moyer), Kate’s one-time roommate and only friend. Anna serves as the catalyst for unlocking memories that both Deeley and Kate claim to have forgotten. And yet, she, too, has her own protective wall against a mutual history that they recall.

Deeley claims to have met her at the Wayfarer’s Tavern in London some 20 years earlier. She denies it, but adopts an intimate, flirtatious posture with him and, in a burst of conviviality they take turns singing lines to each other from the popular ballads of their youth. In fact, the romantic music of the ‘40s that embellish the silences provide some of the play’s best moments.

But the unspoken questions raised are never answered. Did Deeley and Anna have a sexual connection? Were Anna and Kate more than platonic friends? What is the meaning of the recollection of the crying man? Why is Kate so intent on maintaining her inscrutability, neither confirming nor denying the divergent images that Deeley and Anna have of her? As Anna notes, in defense of her own memories, “There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened.”

In typical Pinter fashion, “Old Times” also deals with the themes of loneliness and abandonment, a lifelong concern of the playwright. As Pinter’s biographers contend, these themes were instilled in him when, as a young boy, he was sent away from his family to protect him from the bombs and ravages of wartime London.

In more recent times, Pinter has played an ever-expanding role in the political arena, speaking out most vociferously against what he sees as American barbarism. He expounded this theme most publicly in his 45-minute acceptance speech of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005\. It was a most flagrant contradiction to his playwrighting style, in which the audience is invited to fill in the long silences with what they presume are the unspoken thoughts of the protagonists. But, although Pinteresque pauses and silences are the creative hallmarks of his work, he remains, at 78, an outspoken and influential voice for peace and justice. No ambiguity there.

“Old Times” will run Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, through April 13 at the Lost Studio Theatre, 130 South LaBrea Ave., in Hollywood. For reservations, call (800) 595-4849.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 15, 2008.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/031508.pdf?ref=smdp.com)