Harold Pinter’s Old Times will be seen through a new light in Unifaun’s production of it, which opens next week. Jo Caruana speaks to director Chris Gatt and finds herself intrigued by a play that has captivated audiences for over three decades
The greats don’t just go away; they keep resurfacing. They are reinvented and presented anew. And thank goodness.
Like so many great playwrights, Harold Pinter’s work is continuously ushered out into the limelight and reintroduced through the fresh eyes of a new director and actors.
One of Pinter’s most popular pieces – Old Times – is a fine example of a play that continues to wow audiences over 30 years since it was written. The show first premiered at the Aldwych Theatre in London in June 1971. It has been revived across the world regularly ever since, including in a high-profile production starring Rufus Sewell, Kristin Scott Thomas and Lia Williams at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London in 2013.
“This play may be 44 years old but it has been part of the mainstream repertoire ever since it first befuddled people back in 1971,” Gatt tells me.
“I find Old Times to be just as riveting today as it was then because, like all good dream plays, it remains unresolved and mysterious while still revealing a lot about ourselves and our relationships.”
It is as though Pinter uses an absurd situation to coldly and honestly shed light on our inner thoughts
Old Times begins with married couple Kate (played by Laura Best) and Deeley (Mikhail Basmadjian) smoking cigarettes and discussing Kate’s old friend Anna (Pia Zammit), who is coming to visit them. But we quickly find ourselves wondering why she is so keen to reacquaint now, after 20 years of silence. What evolves is an elusive ménage à trois, with the three characters encircling each other to ask questions and gain dominance.
“Like Chekhov and, more recently, Becket, Pinter doesn’t do naturalism,” Gatt explains. “He does realism. His plays take place in a universe which functions with one set of rules – its logic one step removed from us – and yet is deeply truthful to who we are and what we feel and why.
“It is always difficult to explain the charm and excitement of a Pinter play. Very often the situation is bizarre and illogical, and yet, by accepting this illogical twist, we perceive in much clearer terms how we function; where our true emotions lie. It is as though Pinter uses an absurd situation to coldly and honestly shed light on our inner thoughts and emotions.”
The play is being produced by Unifaun Theatre Company. Many of Unifaun’s past productions have involved some level of shock factor. Among them, popular highlights like Sarah Kane’s Blasted, Some Explicit Polaroids by Mark Ravenhill and, more recently, Tender Napalm by Philip Ridley, have all raised audience eyebrows in one way or another. Will this show do the same?
“If shining a light on our true emotion and desires is considered shocking, then yes,” Gatt continues. “A true shock is never an obvious one. Truly shocking moments are the ones that reveal something about oneself, something we always knew was there but tried very hard to conceal.
“In that case, yes, the play has some shocking moments. It will call on audiences to ask themselves: ‘What would I have done in that moment?’ That said, it is also a very humorous play and a darkly erotic one.”
Pinter is, of course, renowned for his language and word skills. But, I wonder, does that make the play wordy and long by modern audience standards?
“Not at all,” Gatt says. “A Pinter play is never ‘wordy’. His use and choice of words is as delicate as his choice of pauses.”
With Pinter, he tells me, you will never find two words when one word will do. Each word is so laden with meaning that it needs the power of the pause to allow time for it to be unpacked.
“Pinter’s dialogue is like the clues from a cryptic crossword,” the director grins. “And, like those clues, they are filled with intrigue, humour, cheekiness and, just when you think you have found the answer, you are left with that troubling sense that, in fact, you are just about to be trapped.”
For Gatt, who is easily one of Malta’s most established and respected directors, staging Old Times has proved intriguing. “Pinter is very obtuse as to the set, but it is obvious from the start that we are in a different landscape. The set is ostensibly a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. But really it could be in the mind’s eye, but whose mind and whose eye?”
When crafting the setting, Gatt and his team had long discussions with designer Aldo Moretti so as to create the aura of that moment between sleeping and waking. “It’s that dream state when things are both very clear and very confused,” he says. “That is the location of Old Times; it is a play about memories that is, itself, a memory of a play.”
Finally, I wonder how Gatt has managed to make the momentous mental leap between his most recent production – Pinocchio the Panto – and this.
“I think that is always one advantage of working in theatre in Malta,” he tells me. “The ability not to be boxed into one style or type of theatre. The flexibility of moving from a pantomime like Pinocchio to a Pinter play is quite a rare thing and a privilege which one should not take for granted. In all cases the main thing is to respect the style, the script and the actors. Everything flows naturally from that – and that is exactly what has happened with Old Times.”
• Old Times is being staged at St James Cavalier on March 7, 8, 12-15, and 19-22 at 8pm. Tickets may be obtained by e-mail: info@sjcav.org, online from www.sjcav.org or by calling 2122 3200