Old Times NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (114)
See it if You love Pinter and don't mind working very hard to grasp at a story
Don't see it if You need coherency and clarity in your writing
See it if Interesting play, rough around the edges.
Don't see it if you won't, it closed.
See it if you're a Pinter die-hard. The turntable set revolving at a glacial pace sums up the play: actors going round&round but getting nowhere.
Don't see it if you can help it.
See it if you love Pinter
Don't see it if I still don't understand what happened here.
See it if you're a fan of Pinter and have an understanding of his work.
Don't see it if you don't like long dramas that make you think.
See it if you are a Clive Owen fan.
Don't see it if you are expecting inventive staging. This Pinter play seemed terribly dated and slow. The performances are good, the play isn't.
See it if Like absurdist surrealist plays
Don't see it if Dislike the above
See it if You enjoy Pinter's work
Don't see it if You're not a Pinter fan and have a hard time following a non linear story
Critic Reviews (38)
"This Pinter sizzles, thanks to a ramped-up atmosphere and some hot, hot actors...In 65 loaded minutes of shifting dynamics, I’m not sure if Deeley and Kate and Anna know anything about each other—or if we know anything about this play, which remains as alluring and sexy and ultimately unknowable as any of these sexy, sizzling stars. How can you use your memory to review a play whose message is that memory is completely unreliable?"
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"If this production stumbles at times, it’s in the stylised poise of Reilly’s performance. She’s a fantasy figure, rather than the fearfully blank space where a person used to be...This twisting, elusive play becomes a tale of a haunting. But here, the chill comes not from the supernatural but the past. The play prickles with unspoken trauma and Hodge succeeds in turning the temperature to sub-zero."
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"On some levels the concept---and the high-energy, fast-paced performances that it demands---serves the play, but only in a limited way..This 'Old Times' has a certain superficiality to it, and that the menace they pose to one another over their respective claims on Kate’s life becomes muted...While this excursion to 'Old Times' never bores---and in fact can be quite entertaining and is viscerally stimulating---it never delivers an emotional punch."
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"Initially the actors appear more interested in posing than in acting, but eventually they form a true ensemble...An enormous backdrop of concentric circles and an icy, door-like slab suggest a vest-pocket Valhalla more than an English country cottage. But the actors’ skillful by-play helps blot out the images, as do the thumping snatches of original music supplied by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke."
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"Roundabout Theatre has placed great placards in the main lobby charting their devotions to Pinter over the years. The large audience, respectful, awed, attentive, pays tribute as well. That Owens, Best and Reilly do very little to deserve this adulation is somehow beside the point. The point is Pinter. Sir Harold must be smiling down from whatever heaven he chose to be in. Or not."
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"The parts are played with vigour, brasher than you would expect to see on an English stage...The sexy edge is more angular, the stakes are higher, the comedy quite a bit funnier. All deliberately so. It reaps rewards often."
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