Pinter and Riposte

by Dan Collins

How you feel about Harold Pinter-- the Nobel Prize winner for Literature and prolific writer, poet, playwright and political activist who died in 2006--may indicate how you approach drama.

Is a night at the theater, simply that...an evening's entertainment where you laugh, you cry, you kiss $15 bucks good-bye and then have coffee and cake at the corner café? Or should what happens on stage be an evolutionary experience, reality taken to a higher level, where all the "ums" and "ahs" of our daily lives, the chaff of chitchat, is burnt away, leaving on pure, unadulterated truth?

If the former, stick to THE MUSIC MAN and BYE BYE BIRDIE. If the latter, head on down to "America's Oldest Little Theatre in Continuous Existence," the Vagabond Players in Fells Point, and catch "OLD TIMES," Pinter's 1970s play about a little dinner party gone awry where the characters chew on much more than the hostess' casserole.

The plot of this play-less than 90 minutes in length, including the 15 minute intermission-is simple.  Husband and wife Deeley (Mark Scharf) and Kate (Jodie Phillips) live in an English countryside home and entertain Kate's "one and only best friend" Anna (Janise Whelan) visiting from her estate in Sicily.

As is typical of a Pinter play, it's all about who has control, who is the most empowered, and in this case, Deeley and Kate cross metaphorical swords in a pitchEd Battle as to who loves and knows fare Anna best.

Kate is described by both Deeley and Anna as "floating"; Phillips performs her role as an ethereal creature only semi-attached to reality. Her movements and speech are measured,  as if speech were a great effort, as if she were moving through jello rather than air.

Director Sharon Weaver occasionally caresses Phillips with a soft spotlight, making it clear that her Kate is the focus of attention, by both those on stage and in the audience. She is a prize, heavenly, a beauty whom Kate describes as "looking at me as though part of her dream."

"Is it always this silent?" Kate says, and in so doing, breaks the silence, the status quo between Deeley and Anna, and is soon spraying the room with non-stop reminiscence about her salad days in London with Kate.

Deeley counters with not-so-gentle jabs at Kate's occasionally pretentious language-the words "gaze" and "lest" in particular-as the two play a game of one-upmanship over whose life is more entwined, in-synch, in-touch with Kate's.

In the first act, Weaver uses colorful images of people from foreign lands-- Africa, the Middle East, Spain-suspended in air, as the set's backdrop, but in the second act, these have been replaced entirely by large, black and white photos of Kate. Kate is the world, the center of attention.

Now, the question of course is, "why is that?" What's so darn special about Kate? Pinter gives us little to go on as Kate admits she has really no friends and didn't seem to think it at all odd that Anna stole her underwear 20 years ago, but that's Pinter.

When Anna declares, "There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened...But as I recall them, so they take place," Deeley quite rightly responds, "WHHAAAT?"

Pinter's characters never seem... quite right...not quite real, just a bit off center, saying and doing things that are, frankly, odd. When Anna and Kate appear briefly as allies against Deeley, sitting together on the couch and offering him a glass of brandy, Deeley takes the glass, holds it out...and pours it on to the floor.

WHHAAT?

At intermission, I overhead one of the patrons say, "I don't think I'm getting this." One must remove one's "MUSIC MAN" sensibilities when watching Pinter. What seems odd, is actually right on target. Deeley is at war with Anna for the "right" to Kate. To accept the brandy would be a sort of "giving in," an admission of defeat. He won't have it. The brandy snifter is like a gauntlet. And he has, quite literally, thrown it down.

By play's end, there is a winner in this foil-less fencing match, though it may be a Pyrrhic victory. Kate is a symbol of those things we love, especially those characteristics we lack in ourselves. Therefore, no matter how many memories we may have to trump our rival, no matter how many clever quips and reflective pauses we can dish out, that which we love we can never truly possess.  

Old Times" runs through March 29 at Vagabond Players, 806 S. Broadway St., Fells Point. Showtimes are 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $15. Call 410-563-9135.

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