STAGE REVIEW : West Coast Ensemble Offers Harold Pinter’s ‘Old Times’

Harold Pinter was Noel Coward’s favorite playwright, and the choice is not as odd as it seems. They both had a facility for saying a great deal in their similarly spare dialogue--as in everyday conversation, behind which we hide and through which we give vague clues to the inner lives we don’t always want to share.

Pinter’s “Old Times,” at West Coast Ensemble, is a masterpiece of oral deception as a marriage is examined through a visitor from the past. Twenty years have changed the trio’s perspective, but could never alter the footsteps that brought them to this moment.

The lives of Kate and Deeley are as bleak and barren as the moors outside their converted farmhouse. In Jim Barbaley’s beautifully integrated production design, those moors are seen darkly through the windows. Their jagged abstraction is echoed in the interior, in the artworks that adorn the room, in the rumpled complacency of its occupants.

Kate and Anna were roommates before Deeley met Kate at a performance of “Odd Man Out.” That film’s Robert Newton brought them together, Deeley says. Deeley also says he now realizes he has met Anna. The relationships the three shared, separately, are a jigsaw puzzle Pinter carefully puts together through the protracted conversation. As each piece falls into place, his ability to give import to small and intimate moments sets him apart from most playwrights. He doesn’t need to set off fireworks--he makes tiny gems glow.

The surface of this production also glows. Under Dan Kern’s mesmeric, clockwork direction, the thumping heartbeat beneath that surface is clear. The “Pinter pauses” are as full of sound and fury as the seemingly--at first--genial cocktail chatter. How pleasant are these three, and how disturbed.

The performances glitter as well. Robert Rigamonti, as Deeley, flows seamlessly from pleasant curiosity about Kate’s old friend, to utter desolation as the last puzzle piece is dropped. Carol Wade’s Kate hides behind a maddening calm as Deeley and Anna play out their memory game, and Jan Sheldrick nimbly finds Anna’s strength as Anna steps in and out of the erotic smokescreen she set up for Deeley.

Pinter, like Coward, is not easy theater. It requires style, insight and technical virtuosity. These qualities, like Barbara Nova’s elegant costumes, are worn by cast and director with relish. Marcos Estebez’s original music and soundtrack are as minimal and meaningful as Pinter’s dialogue.

“Old Times,” West Coast Ensemble, 6240 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends April 26. $15; (213) 788-5900. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.