The play was specially written for actor Patrick Magee, who delivered its first performance on the occasion of Beckett's seventieth birthday celebration, at London's Royal Court Theatre on 20 May 1976.
The text requires that Listener open and close his eyes (which stay shut for most of the time) and hold a smile – "toothless for preference" – at the very end of the performance.
For company, he has made up stories and now, after years suffering from "the Time cancer",[4] has considerable difficulty differentiating between fact and fiction.
He did not stipulate, however, that any effort be made to differentiate between the voices unless it were impractical to have them coming from three distinct locations; in that instance he asked for a change in pitch to be used to distinguish one from another.
The fact that the 'natural order' (BAC – see below) is restored and maintained in the third round is an unlikely reason because Beckett changed the pattern only in the last revision, and so it is a doubtful explanation for the smile that had been previously included in earlier drafts.
A wry reflection on the insignificance of the individual human existence in the context of infinity?”[7] Does Listener smile because he finally recognizes himself in the different selves of his memory?
All that can be said for certain is that the story – indeed the man’s life – has “come and gone … in no time” (C12) words which echo Vladimir’s at the end of Waiting for Godot: “Astride of a grave and a difficult birth.”[9] In the 1977 German production, directed by Beckett himself, he did make one addition to the final scene: Klaus "Herm’s smile ... merged with his audible panting into a single scornful exhale-laugh – Beckett’s last minute inspiration.
The man returns for a "last time" (A1) to the town he grew up in and tries unsuccessfully to reach the folly where he hid as a child of between ten and twelve (A4/A10) looking at a “picture book” (A3) and talking to himself for company (A9), making up “imaginary conversations” while his family were out in the dark looking for him (A4).
It describes sitting with a girl beside a wheat field exchanging vows of affection, (B1) then lying with her in the sand (B7) and subsequently being alone in the same settings (B9).
These events appear to be reviewed at a turning point in his life: whilst sitting beside a window in the dark listening to an owl hooting he has been remembering/imagining a first-love scenario but then finds he can’t continue and has to give up trying to (B12).
[16] Each voice in That Time has a subject area independent of the others at first, but as the play progresses, connections are made through common images and recurring themes.
The facts that the man's parents are both dead and the green greatcoat (“the distinguishing outer garb of many of Beckett’s characters”[17]) left for him by his father are mentioned in A12 and C2.
[30] Voices assail him "from one quarter and now from another",[31] making up stories (the "fable of one with you in the dark")[32] that "are coming to an end" in silence and solitude: "And you as you always were.