The living room set of Nick Ordway '02 and Sarah Curran '02's joint senior thesis production of Harold Pinter's "Old Times" looks like a surgical theater. The only colors in the set — designed by Sam Roche '02 — are white, gray, and black.
A white tea set rests on a black table, a decanter and drinking glasses on another black table. The only ornaments are two sleek ceramic cats poised in niches in the wall. One is black, the other white. They preside silently over the room.
The setting is perfect for what director Ordway refers to as "Pinter's theater of cruelty" — a frosty, sterile environ-ment in which three characters will come together to wound and ultimately destroy one another with words.
The premise of "Old Times" is simple. Kate and Deeley, a British couple in their mid-forties, await a visit from Kate's old friend and roommate, Anna. Anna arrives and precipitates an emotional duel with Deeley over the history of their respective relationships with Kate. Gradually, the characters' hidden truths emerge.
"It's one long confrontation between all of them," says Ordway. "The meat of this play is discovering what happened twenty years ago and watching how that has affected them — watching how these characters interact with their pasts."
He refuses to reveal too much of the plot, admitting only that it's "a weird, strange play about time, language, memory, and sexuality. Not much happens. They drink and they smoke. There's a little bit of singing." The play's substance lies in its language, its pauses, its verbal games. "It's a war with words," he says.
Ordway has played a variety of roles on the Princeton stage — a mad doctor, a stuttering lackey, a gay man, a black man, JFK Jr. and a character called Mr. Pear ("A member of the fruit family. I wore a green wig," he explains.)
He has appeared in two thesis productions at 185 Nassau — last year's "What the Butler Saw" and "The Giant Swearing Beard." "Old Times" marks his directorial debut at Princeton.
Ordway's thesis is a project in conjunction with the English and theater departments. In addition to directing the play, Ordway is required to keep a journal of the experience. He has considerable freedom with the journal content. "Some directors examine the academic discourse on the play, some create images — almost like a collage — and sometimes people write scenes from the play that don't exist."
For Ordway it was a record of conception, creation, and execution. "Directing the play and acting the play is about discovering the play," he says.
Ordway made an unusual choice in casting a non-student, Walter Cupit, as Deeley. Cupit is the scene shop manager and set builder at 185 Nassau. Ordway sought an actor who could credibly portray an older man. Stage manager Rosemary Rodriguez '04 suggested that Cupit audition for the role of Deeley.
"Deeley's solid to the ground, territorial, controlling," says Cupit, who also built the set. "He likes to think he runs the household, but he doesn't."
Kate, who is played by Sarah Curran '02, is a more reticent character. "She's a little enigmatic. Quiet," says Curran.
Kate is the foil to effervescent Anna (Ashley Frankson '03). "Anna's over the top, bubbly, vivacious, posh in a bohemian way," says Frankson. Curran adds, "She comes in like a cyclone. Like the Tasmanian Devil. If she didn't come, our lives would go on exactly the same way for the next twenty years. She messes it all up for us. Things go haywire."
The verbal sparring gets progressively more vicious, but never loses its refinement. "We're British!" says Frankson. "We duel while holding teacups and sipping tea."
Ordway says he enjoyed working with the ensemble of three. "With a really small cast, you feel like you're all doing it together. There's no real lead — the roles are all equal," he says.
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