Old times

Kate and her husband Deeley are expecting a visitor at their home. The visitor is Anna, Kate's old friend, and her arrival sets the three of them talking about a past they all claim to have lived through.

The trouble is that their memories do not match. Deeley tells one version of their shared history, and Anna's account quietly cuts against it. Deeley in turn unsettles what Kate remembers, so each of them holds a different past.

This is a play by Harold Pinter, built almost entirely from conversation. The dialogue is tense and ambiguous, and much of the weight sits in what the characters leave unsaid. Memory here is unreliable, and shared history proves a fragile thing.

As the stories pile up, events from twenty years earlier start to come into focus. The question the play turns on is what that truth will cost the three of them once it is out. The mood is haunting and unsettling, with menace in the pauses.