"There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false."
"The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend you remember."
- Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter makes it perfectly clear how he isn't always perfectly clear.
That ambiguity about real and unreal frames Pinter's 1971 play "Old Times," which The Rogue Theatre opens next week.
"The play is about memory and the whole sorting out of what happened 20 years ago between the characters," says Cynthia Meier, who is directing the three-character play.
"What happens to memory, which are reinforced and which fall by the wayside, and how we all remember the past differently - that rings a bell for all of us."
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The setup is this:
A married couple, Deeley and Kate, are visited by Kate's former roommate, Anna.
Together, they go over old times. Memories become jumbled, interchangeable, stolen, made-up and real. Jealousies creep in. Sex is in the air.
"It's a short play with a poetic element in talking about memory and talking about relationships," says Meier.
Ah, but this is Pinter. It couldn't possibly be that simple.
It isn't, admits Meier.
"You think 'OK, that's what happened,' then another character will layer another memory."
It's a bit like life, she adds.
"It's always full of interpretation and perceptions."
Pinter, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005, gave a clue in his acceptance speech about how to approach his works.
"He talks about conceiving the first line of the play, how he hears the first words of the play, and then slowly he comes to understand what the relationship is between two people having the dialogue," says Meier.
"I was thinking of how the plays work on the audience in the same way. We experience these foggy forms of his words and characters, and then slowly we come to understand what they are and what they mean."
And always with Pinter, there's the mystery in his works that continues to lure people to them.
"It's just captivating because it's cast in shadow, mysterious. You never feel you are done with it; it's something you want to keep coming back to, like a complex puzzle. You want to know more about it, even if it's not completely knowable. I think the mystery is so intriguing."
If you go
"Old Times"
• Presented by: The Rogue Theatre.
• By: Harold Pinter
• Director: Cynthia Meier
• When: Previews 7:30 p.m. Thursday; opens 7:30 p.m. next Friday; regular performances, 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays, through March 13.
• Where: The Rogue Theatre, 300 E. University Blvd., in the Historic Y.
• Tickets: Previews, $19; regular performances, $25; March 3 and 10, $25 or pay what you will. Half-price student rush tickets available 15 minutes before curtain.
• Reservations/information: www.theroguetheatre.org or 551-2053.
• Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes, with one intermission.
• Cast: Avis Judd, Laura Lippman, Joseph McGrath.
• Et cetera: A musical preshow begins 15 minutes before curtain.
Here's a reason to stay up late
The Rogue Theatre's After Curfew Series and The Now Theatre are staging Eugéne Ionesco's "The Bald Soprano."
The play - Ionesco's first - launched the theater of the absurd movement.
The play is thick with sentences that make little sense, it defies logic, and it ignores theatrical conventions.
A plot? Well, here's the setup: Two couples are having dinner together and discussing plenty of nothing.
It's not surprising that Ionesco dubbed this an "anti-play."
Performances are 10 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, and 7:30 p.m. Sundays. It opens Thursday and continues through March 12 at The Rogue. Tickets are $10.
- Kathleen Allen
Contact reporter Kathleen Allen at kallen@azstarnet.com or 573-4128.
