Old Times NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (114)
See it if You like Heavy drama that is more literature than entertainment
Don't see it if You are looking for something light and fun
See it if Many plot twists, but a bit hard to understand. Good actors.
Don't see it if you're looking for dazzling entertainment. It's only an hour long. It starts our rather boring.
See it if you are obsessed with Clive Owen, you like interesting scenic design, great acting, you like relationship-plays, pretty setting & characters
Don't see it if you want something refreshing or unique, you want a clear story, you want to see something you've never seen before, plays easily bore you
See it if you want to see Clive Owen, Eve Best and Kelley Riley! It was a great cast for sure. you appreciate unique staging
Don't see it if you don't like cerebral, slow moving shows
See it if You are a Pinter fan and relish post-show arguments about what the play is REALLY about. Apparently Pinter wasn't totally sure either.
Don't see it if You need to understand, at some level, what is actually going on, and prefer your Pinter at normal conversational level rather than shouty.
See it if Harold Pinter is your cup of tea.
Don't see it if You do not want to think but just entertained.
See it if you are an avid Pinter fan -- or a Clive Owen fan.
Don't see it if you think that it's not worth going to Broadway for a 65-minute play.
See it if you enjoy great acting and want to be in and out of a show in minimal time.
Don't see it if you have no patience for Pinter at his most Pinter. You don't want to listen to subscriber audiences cough relentlessly through a quiet play
Critic Reviews (38)
"The test of any production of this enigmatic, talky 70-minute one-act is whether it keeps you engaged, and Douglas Hodge’s new production mostly does the trick...There’s little doubt that many theatergoers will be frustrated by the lack of a definite conclusion, and many will nod off more than here and there. But those who keep up with these 'Times' will be rewarded."
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"Owen’s Deeley abounds with archness but doesn’t reach into the core of his pain or loss...But it’s Best who commands attention. Her Anna is smart, alluring, vulnerable and quixotic. 'There are things I remember which may never have happened but as I recall them so they take place,' Anna says at one point. 'Old Times' is just as slippery, mysterious and seductive."
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"There’s no getting around Pinter’s deliberately cryptic text, and several of Hodge’s choices, rather than working to ground the goings-on in some recognizable reality and thus orient the audience, instead seem to revel in the play’s weirdness...'Old Times,' while certainly mysterious in its action and rigorous in its language, feels slighter than Pinter’s more familiar work because it is not as ominous nor charged, a puzzle not as worth the time to contemplate."
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"Dwarfed by a vast set, this production of a Pinter play intrigues but never really disturbs it's audience...What should feel haunting, upsetting, frightening and menacing never quite does. This 'Old Times' feels smaller than its set would suggest. In the first scene Kate suggests, 'Anyway, none of this matters.' It should matter more."
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"The actors share a feverish imagination that doesn’t have much to do with the text, but nonetheless illuminates it in quirky ways. I haven’t had this much fun in the theater since Ivo van Hove set 'A Streetcar Named Desire' in a bathtub at the New York Theatre Workshop. Having fun isn’t what you typically expect from watching a Harold Pinter play, much less one of his more indecipherable works...Pinter purists will hate this production."
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"The play was not without its merits...The dialogue had moments of entertaining word play. Under Douglas Hodge’s direction, the usual long Pinter silences were virtually absent...I just did not find the competing memories that involving. Under better circumstances, I might have enjoyed it more. In my opinion, offering a 65-minute play at Broadway prices is pushing the limits."
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"Is it possible to be dazzled by the cast, stunned anew by the elusive meanings of Pinter's 'Old Times' and yet appalled by the production? OK, maybe "appalled" is too rough -- but not by much. Let's say that director Douglas Hodge's tricked-up staging of this gem is bizarre, at best, and betrays a lack of trust in the lean, unnerving brilliance we know as Pinteresque."
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"Does it rise? Does it breathe? Sadly, no...One must point the finger at director Douglas Hodge. Whatever music is to be found in this Pinter play remains unheard. Whatever drama, mostly unseen...I really have no idea what Pinter is up to in this play. But I'm certain Hodge and his team haven't figured it out either."
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