A Membrane of Civility

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.

In Old 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 happened. Certainty is even irrelevant: as Anna says, "There are things I remember which may never have happened but as I recall them so they take place."

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 us.

We witness a struggle between Deeley and Anna for the possession of Kate. Deeley knows the emptiness of his marriage with Kate, and he is driven to the wall by Anna's sinister exploitation of this weakness, in order to win Kate back to the sensual and aesthetic lesbian relationship of twenty years before. Deeley's counter-attacks turn on his attempt to establish his male dominance by fabricating past confrontations in which women are degraded. If he can force the two women to subservient roles, his validity as a husband will be unquestioned.

BUT ANNA DEGRADES Deeley in her recreations of the past, and tries to win Kate with sensuous appeals to a former closeness that has been denied to Deeley. Ultimately it is Kate who commands the most powerful position: she has only to say "No" to either or both of them. But she must first settle her own conflict between the powerful pressures exerted on her by the others, and the desire to withdraw into herself.

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."

Articulating this dynamic interplay between spoken words and latent tensions, and maintaining the superfine balance between the three characters, present a formidable challenge to the director and his cast. If John Greenwood's production does not always succeed in this, the attempt reveals intelligence and sensitivity. Greenwood has rightly kept movement and gesture to a minimum, letting the drama unfold through the words themselves. Unavoidably, the burden of interpretation rests squarely on nuances of intonation and expression. Occasionally, these nuances go awry.

MICHAEL MARTORANO, as Deeley, holds up well through the skirmishes of the first act, succumbing as Anna woos Kate just before the curtain. But he crumbles early in the second act, just after he has dealt Anna a setback in their battle of mutual degradation. Deeley's heavy emphasis on second meanings and his lumbering, wounded desperation rob his words, his weapons, of the strength they had held in the first act. The veneer of civility, too, skillfully maintained in Act I, becomes a travesty earlier than it should.

As a result, the balance of the second act is upset. Anna, commandingly portrayed by Eden Lee Murray, dominates the action through most of the last half of the play, with too much ease. Murray is particularly effective in her adroit modulation between pregnant verbal aggression and ostensibly pleasant urbanity. But the thoroughness with which she overcomes Deeley's attacks leaves us unprepared for Kate's final rejection of Anna.

The rather jarring effect of this rejection arises also from Bonnie Brewster's interesting but somewhat inconsistent interpretation of Kate. Pinter carefully prepares Kate's withdrawal from the tangled demands of her relationships, as the play unfolds. But Brewster's development of this side of Kate is hampered by an excess of vitality. Her surprising tenseness at the beginning of the play, while dramatically provocative, undercuts the numbed aloofness that is a necessary counter-balance to the prevailing tensions. Kate's shower in the second act cleanses her of the sordid jealousy displayed by the others, and leads her to the comfortable isolation in which "Everything's softer...There aren't such edges." But Brewster plays this dreamy, solipsistic rejuvenation as a social instinct, a feeling of warmth toward the others, rather than within herself. To get from this point to her turnabout at the climax of the play requires a rapid and somewhat abrupt transition.

Yet Greenwood and his cast forge this climax with an eloquence that regains the balance that had been lacking, and articulate the final poignant moments so well that the full effect is saved. To do justice to a dramatic moment of such sophistication and complexity is not an easy thing. With even a qualified success, this production is a cut or two above Ex standards.