ABSTRACT
Old Times pushes the boundaries of traditional form further with the fierce re-emergence of the dominant/subservient conflict. This time conflict connects the private level with the public sphere as each momentary skirmish sustains the tension that runs the whole arc of the play. The play also combines Pinter’s fascination with memory with his new fluidity of form developed in Landscape and Silence. Though it is contained in two rooms, Anna’s ambiguous presence at the beginning (she is both there and not there) opens the play out beyond the four walls of the house and breaks a time barrier as well, thrusting the audience into both past and future. But the very conflict which re-invigorates and restores vitality to the play also destroys the relationships which it seeks to preserve in the comfortable lives of these characters, initially secure in shelter and position. They are finally revealed as no less vulnerable to the destructive force of the unconscious conflict for power than the characters living at the margins of life in Pinter’s early work. What justice is achieved comes from the truth revealed after all illusions are stripped away.
