Betrayal

Synopsis

Venturing beneath the cosy facade of middle-class life and into one of every day deceit, Betrayal is a play that begins with an ending. Meet Robert, a publisher, and his wife Emma who runs an art gallery. Add in Robert's best friend Jerry, a literary agent, and then consider the fact that Emma and Jerry have had a seven-year affair and things begin to get interesting. Betrayal opens with Emma and Jerrry meeting for a drink two years after the affair has ended, tracing the relationship of the three backwards over nine years to the evening when it all began...is Emma betraying her husband?...is Jerry betraying his best friend?...or are they all betraying themselves. First played in 1978.

Our Review:

6 June 2007

Harold Pinter’s 1978 drama Betrayal, like the two major plays that precede it, No Man’s Land and Old Times, is a study in memory and friendship, with the central relationship of a seven-year long affair between a married woman and her husband’s best friend recollected in hostility, and in reverse.

I may be wrong, but I don’t think Peter Hall’s original production at the National flagged up the dates of each scene. Roger Michell’s new version certainly does, reminding us that although the play starts two years after the affair ended and reels backwards to the fateful encounter at a party in 1968, it also shuffles forwards a couple of times, giving an elasticity to the action and a challenge to your involvement, which is brilliantly engaged by Pinter’s urgently deft writing.

We now know, of course, that the play is based on the real-life affair Pinter enjoyed with television presenter Joan Bakewell, then the wife of his best friend Mi...

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Latest User Review

Gareth James - 19 July 2007:

Three faultless performances from three great young actors (wonderful to see Sam West and Toby Stephens together - and in a modern play, too) doesn't, I'm afraid, cover up the fact that this is an over-rated play which does not stand up against other 20th Century classics by playwrights like Miller, O'Neill and Tennessee Williams. Worth a visit for the performances, but when are we going to stop putting this second division playwright on a pedestal?...

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