Arts & Entertainment

Mistakes of memory

Tight ‘Old Times’ production explores longing and frustration

Published

15 years ago

June 2, 2011

Both Kate’s husband and her closest female friend want to possess her and her past.

Obsessed with memories, the rivals have shaped recollections stressing their respective importance in Kate’s life. Whether their stories are even a little bit true is unclear, but in Harold Pinter’s enigmatic “Old Times,” now in production at Shakespeare Theatre Company, veracity takes a back seat to the power of relationships and the mistiness of memory.

Seated in the starkly white living room of their quiet seaside home, Deeley (Steven Culp), a successful filmmaker, and his beautiful wife Kate (Tracy Lynn Middendorf) discuss the imminent visit of Anna (Holly Twyford), an old friend whom Kate hasn’t seen in 20 years and her husband has never met. In fact, Deeley knows precious little about Anna, and the tidbits his wife has offered — that Anna is not only her oldest but also her only friend; that they were once flat mates in London; that she used to steal Kate’s underpants – have done nothing to endear her to him.

Anna arrives. Over drinks (and cigarettes), she and Deeley genteelly set to battle while Kate curled up on the couch like a cat looks on rather amusedly. Initially Anna – witty and sociable — recounts the fun times she and Kate shared as single young women in London. In reply, Deeley relays how he first met Kate at a grungy cinema where they’d both gone to see the aptly titled “Odd Man Out.” Anna remembers things differently. She says she saw the film with Kate but Deeley wasn’t there. Eventually, the conversation escalates into a heated contest of who knows Kate best. They even compete in singing the half-forgotten lyrics of Kate’s favorite old songs.

When Kate leaves the room to bathe, Deeley says he remembers Anna from their London days. He claims they drank at the same pub, and one night he even peeked up her skirt at a party. Initially Anna says it can’t be true, but then changes her tune, admitting she was at the party wearing Kate’s underwear. What to believe? At one point Anna says, “There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened.”

While Deeley’s stories about Kate are tinged with sex (he tends to objectify her), Anna’s intimate moments/memories are more gentle — she strokes Kate’s arm while asking if she might draw her bath or read aloud to her. Anna now lives as expat with her husband in Sicily, or so she says. Here, very little is for certain. But clearly she was at one time — or still is — in love with Kate and Kate seems to respond positively to her expressions of tenderness. Feeling relegated to third wheel status, Deeley grows increasingly angry and is ultimately reduced to heaving sobs.

Impeccably staged by Shakepeare’s gay artistic director Michael Kahn, the production is taut and very funny. The three-person cast is first rate. Making her debut at Shakespeare, Twyford (who is also gay) handles the brief, precise Pinter dialogue beautifully, and rather hilariously fills the playwright’s well-known pauses with expectant frozen smiles.

Jane Greenwood’s costumes nicely illustrate Anna and Kate’s differences: In addition to a slick chignon, the former wears a rather severe dress with a bow at her throat while the latter’s casual peach clothes and loose-fitting pink robe describe a softer, less dramatic person. Deeley is appropriately tweedy as the accomplished documentarian relaxing away from town.

Walt Spangler’s bright white set makes a perfect blank slate on which to scribble and erase memories, real and imagined.

Photos

PHOTOS: 2026 Capital Pride Parade

Large crowds attend annual LGBTQ march in Washington, D.C.

Published

3 hours ago

June 21, 2026

Washington Blade photography department

David Archuleta is one of the Grand Marshals of the 2026 Capital Pride Parade. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

The 2026 Capital Pride Parade was held in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, June 20.

(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key, Robert Rapanut and Landon Shackelford)

Theater

‘Feeling Afraid’ explores life of a neurotic stand-up comic

Navigating sex, work, and possibly love in London

Published

1 day ago

June 20, 2026

Patrick Folliard

Steven Webb in ‘Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen’ (Photo by DJ Corey)

‘Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen’
Through July 12
Studio Theatre
1501 14th St., N.W.
$55-$102
Studiotheatre.org

Wordily yet rightly titled, solo show “Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen” dives deeply into the world of a neurotic stand-up comic as he navigates sex, work, and possibly love in London.

Busy arranging hookups and dates on “The App,” the 36-year-old gay funnyman juggles a full dance card; still he’s never been in a romantic relationship. While he’s willing to give love a shot, he’s not pressed about it. As he says, he harbors no fear of dying alone.

Currently making its American premiere at Studio Theatre, this darkly humorous Edinburgh Fringe import features terrific out English actor Steven Webb as The Comedian who’s about to explore what it means to spend all his time with one man.

At Studio’s intimate Mead Theatre, Kat Heath’s minimal set says standard comedy club (fluorescent tube lighting, the mic with a long cord, a single stool backed by a rose-colored curtain), but gay playwright Marcelo Dos Santos has conjured something much more than a live comedy set.

Yes, The Comedian bounces onstage in his red Converse high tops, jeans, and pink shirt with a huge mouth emblazoned on the back, but he delivers more than jokes. At times hilariously self-deprecating, then dark, and occasionally a lesson on what makes standup work, this is a layered, well-acted piece.

With Webb (a keen caricaturist of types and voices) playing all the parts while conducting The Comedian’s hilariously frenetic interior monologue, “Feeling Afraid” takes us through a summer of love. It seems after six chaste dates with The American, our nervous hero has found Mr. Right. The American is earnest, smart, hesitant to initiate sex. He’s also well built with a beautiful smile. And strangely, he’s been medically advised not to laugh aloud.

The Comedian delights in the joys of new love: dates, first kisses, sex, and then suddenly spending all of his time with the adored. Visits to art galleries become fun. Eating home cooked meals followed by grim documentaries is a thing. The Comedian is beguiled as his own boyish figure fills out, but something isn’t right. He can’t entirely relax.

Along the way we meet the Aussie doctor, our protagonist’s longtime hookup; a young runner with some exceptional body parts; the random third in a failed threesome; grumpy working comics, male and female; and an ineffectual counselor.

Webb gives a lightning-fast performance that boggles the mind (in terms velocity and virtuosity). He can be impish, very impish. He’s nervous energy incarnate, flashing jazz hands, grimacing but handsome when still. He’s likeable, a necessity when delivering a hilariously rude joke just feet away from two stone-faced audience members. (Perhaps they were laughing on the inside? At any rate, they stayed through the end the show.)

Produced by the team behind Fringe hits “Fleabag” and “Baby Reindeer,” small stage works that were developed into major TV screen successes, “Feeling Afraid” is funny for sure, and it’s also highly confessional, sexually explicit, and raw.

Written by Dos Santos during COVID lockdown, the piece was a smash hit in the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe before finding further success in London. Its depiction of a youngish queer guy navigating the big city rings entirely true. Like so much Fringe stuff, the one-man show is delightfully lewd and standup inspired.

One little moan: the show closes cleverly but too abruptly with its star dashing offstage without sufficiently basking in the admiration and applause of his thoroughly chuffed audience.

They say third time’s a charm, and regarding “Feeling Afraid,” I’d agree. After two performance cancellations (first for laryngitis and the second involving faulty air conditioning on an especially muggy June evening), I made my third trek to Studio where I found both the actor and AC in very fine fettle. And truly, Webb’s work was more than worth the wait.