SOURCE: Ford, Mark. Review of Old Times, by Harold Pinter. Times Literary Supplement, no. 4818 (4 August 1995): 18.

In the following review, Ford asserts that Pinter's Old Times is ultimately an unsuccessful play.

Old Times, written in 1970, is Harold Pinter's most recessed and uncertain full-length play. It is concerned—like much of his drama—with a triangular relationship, in this case between a man and two women. The characters are all in their early forties. Deeley and Kate are married, and live in a converted farmhouse in the country; here they are visited by Anna, with whom Kate shared a room in London twenty years before. It is the first time they have met since then.

Threesomes obviously appeal to Pinter because they allow him to present our strategies for survival and our attempts at appropriation at their starkest. Deeley recounts how he first met Kate in a cinema showing the...