THAT THEATRE COMPANY and WHY NOT THEATRE COMPANY join forces to present Old Times.

Erotic and sensual, haunting and poetic – a blackly comic play.

So many of Pinter’s plays inhabit a predominantly masculine world, in which one person is always trying to get one over another. The rooms in which his dramas are set become battlegrounds – for territory, possession and control.

But in his greatest dramas, women emphatically make their presence felt, too. You only have to think of Betrayal, The Homecoming and of course, this play, to realize what a master Pinter is at conveying the thrill, the mystery and the destructive force of desire.

The action is set in the home of Deeley, a filmmaker, and his wife, Kate, a couple who have been married for 20 years. Their rural fastness, however, is invaded, in characteristic Pinter fashion, by a third party, Anna, who used to share a room with Kate when they were young secretaries in bohemian London, and has now come to visit.

This piece becomes a battle for the possession of Kate – Anna loves her every bit as much as her husband – and a meditation on the impossibility of ever fully knowing the object of our desire.

These are deep, dark waters, where memory mixes with desire.