Betrayal
From: Friday, 27th May 2011
To: Saturday, 20 August 2011
Our Review: 
Your Reviews:
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Synopsis
Kristin Scott Thomas, Douglas Henshall and Ben Miles star in Ian Rickson's revival of Harold Pinter]'s Betrayal at the Comedy Theatre for a strictly limited season.
Famously played backwards in time, Betrayal - one of Pinter’s most oft-revived plays - traces a seven-year affair between art gallery owner Emma and literary agent Jerry, the best friend of her publisher husband Robert, from its poignant end to its first illicit kiss.
Premiered at the National Theatre in 1978 with a cast comprising Daniel Massey, Michael Gambon and Penelope Wilton the production was last seen in London at the Donmar Warehouse in 2007, where it starred Dervla Kirwan and Samuel West. David Jones directed the Oscar and BAFTA-nominated film adaptation of the piece in 1983 with Patricia Hodge, Jeremy Irons and Ben Kingsley.
Kristin Scott Thomas, a two-time Whatsonstage.com Award winner for her performances in As You Desire Me and Three Sisters both at the Playhouse, was last seen on stage playing Arkadina in The Seagull at the Royal Court Theatre for which she won the Olivier Award for Best Actress. She went on to reprise the role on Broadway the following year. Her extensive film credits include Nowhere Boy, Easy Virtue, The Other Boleyn Girl, Gosford Park, The Horse Whisperer, The English Patient, Mission Impossible, Angels & Insects and Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Douglas Henshall is best known on television for playing Nick Cutter in the long running ITV series Primeval. His recent stage credits include The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, The Cryptogram , Death of a Salesman, The Crucible and The Coast of Utopia . His television credits also include South Riding, The Silence, The Strange Case of Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle, Lewis, Collision and Psychos.
Ben Miles was last on stage Measure for Measure at the Almeida. His theatre credits included The Norman Conquests at the Old Vic and on Broadway, My Child, Richard II, The Cherry Orchard, The London Cuckolds and Mary Stuart, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. His television credits include leading roles in Coupling, Lark Rise to Candleford, Freezing and Sex, The City and Me, Prime Suspect, Hustle, Sea of Souls and Trial and Retribution.
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005 and recipient of the Companion of Honour in 2002 Harold Pinter wrote 32 plays, 22 screenplays and directed 36 theatre productions prior to his death in 2008.
Whatsonstage.com have some great availability for Betrayal Comedy Theatre tickets so follow the buy tickets links for what us sure to be one of the hit plays of the summer!
Our Review:
Michael Coveney - 16 June 2011
The transience of life, the permanence of love: each time I see Harold Pinter’s 1978 mini-masterpiece, I feel a little older, a little sadder. It skims the surface and bites hard on a lost secret love affair between a married woman and her husband’s best friend.
Ian Rickson’s production is very good, but Jeremy Herbert’s neutral grey design, with splashes of colour for Venice, and a stained glass window in the pub, is not sufficiently clean or clinical (lots of bumping of furniture backstage), and the performance of Kristin Scott Thomas as Emma, while suitably glacial and enigmatic, with an odd vocal wobbliness, is not as serene or enchanting as Dervla Kirwan’s at the Donmar four years ago.
That revival, in fact, was definitive. Here, the friendship of literary agent Jerry (Douglas Henshall) and publisher Robert (Ben Miles), married to Emma, runs strong but not deep. Hatchet-jawed Miles catches the impatience and cruelty of Ro...
Latest User Review
Steve - 11 August 2011:
Ben Miles projects a fire in his character's belly about the subject of betrayal that the other principals lack. Perhaps that is because Pinter is too forgiving of Jerry (his alter ego) and Emma (his married lover, Joan Bakewell's alter ego) to allow for us to fully see what shits they are. I mean, all the characters in this are wretched, selfish people, milking others for ego gratification. Scott Thomas portrays a convincing shark of a woman, who takes and takes until she's gorged herself, then cuts people off ruthlessly. Joan Bakewell should have sued. Overall, this is a very short clever play about unlikeable people seeking self gratification, and paying a price for it, and if that's what you want, just watch the coverage of the London riots, and the aftermath of recriminations, investigations and prosecutions for free on TV....
Creative
Harold Pinter (Author)
Sonia Friedman Productions (Producer)
Ian Rickson (Director)
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