BY JOAN KIM

In print | March 6, 2008

Silence. Plays rely on poetic words but the pauses in between the dialogue can structure the most powerful moments in a scene. Playwright Harold Pinter took advantage of the power of creating uncomfortable dynamics on stage to take the audience to a different level of understanding and misunderstanding. For her Honors Acting thesis, Rachel Sugar ‘08 starred in Pinter’s play “Old Times,” carrying out the playwright’s imaginative vision.

A flicker of warm light disrupts the darkness as a small flame lights a cigarette. A woman’s blase expression is all that is visible until the theater lights turn up. The initial moments of “Old Times” set the scene in a English countryside house occupied by husband and wife, Deeley and Kate, played by Stephan Graf ‘09 and Sugar. The couple receives a visitor, Anna, played by Stephanie Duncan ’08. Anna, Kate’s strong-spirited friend from 20 years past, unearths memories of their escapades in London. The three characters reveal different versions of these memories to each other and to the audience, only to realize that their stories are intertwined with each other even though Deeley and Anna believe they are meeting for the first time. One such moment is when Deeley recounts meeting a girl during visit to a London tavern only to discover from Anna’s version of the story that the girl was she.

As several of the recalled events are echoed in the present time of the play, the truth of each skewed recollection is left to be determined by the audience. Throughout the play, Kate’s two companions, past and present, struggle to possess Kate through their competing memories.

Sugar chose this psychologically intriguing play because of a recommendation from theater professor Elizabeth Stevens. “It’s an incredible, beautiful script. It’s a real challenging script and it required a subtlety that had never been required of me before,” Sugar said. The dialogue itself was filled with innuendo and witty banter that pushed tensions to the edge, but the lack of action in the scenes left a great deal to be interpreted by the actors.

“Dramaturgically, it was harder to figure out. There is a plot but nothing happens on stage,” Sugar said. According to Sugar, the final product was a result of many trials and errors. Sugar herself underwent serious preparation for her role. “My director had me watch a lot of movies — both old movie stars and contemporary actresses whom she felt had the same inscrutability of Kate, my character,” she said. Sugar also drew inspiration from a program note of another of Pinter’s plays, “The Birthday Party,” which said that during rehearsal, the director spoke to individual actors about their roles but kept those conversations private from the rest of the cast.

Sugar found this idea to be helpful for “Old Times” since everyone in the cast did not share the same set of experiences. “Memory is so intertwined,” said Sugar. “The characters don’t remember the same events. Mundane exchanges are so loaded and none of it is said explicitly.”

Pinter kept to his style in “Old Times,” where the depth of each character is revealed little by little to both the other characters on stage and to the audience. The actors created a level of uneasiness and tension on stage which ironically belied the high level of ease and comfort among the cast. The audience squirmed at every awkward moment and walked out with a greater appreciation for the complex nature of each character.

Sugar took on a great acting challenge, which was all the more difficult since Kate is less vocal than the other characters. She remained a powerful presence on stage even when silent, fully captivating the audience.

“Rachel is so intense in a freaky, ethereal, bizarre way and Stephanie was intense in her own way,” Louis Jargow ‘10 said. "Rachel and Stephanie have been acting together for a long time and they have the best chemistry I’ve seen on stage." Although Jargow felt the set and the directing left something to be desired, he felt that the acting brought everything together.

Sugar, Graf and Duncan’s performance has even some inspired students to delve deeper into works of Pinter. “I’ve always been a big fan of Pinter… [The production] made me check out "Old Times” from the library so I could read it again," Leah Rethy ’10 said.

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