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.
Famously played backwards in time, Betrayal traces a seven-year affair - between art gallery owner Emma (Kirwan) and literary agent Jerry (Stephens), the best friend of her publisher husband Robert (West) - from its poignant end to its first illicit kiss.
The semi-autobiographical drama was last seen in the West End in a 2003 production directed by Peter Hall, who also helmed the 1978 premiere at the National, where Penelope Wilton, Michael Gambon and Daniel Massey starred. Michell also directed Pinter’s Old Times at the Donmar Warehouse three years ago. Betrayal continues its limited season at the venue until 21 July 2007.
Widely considered the most accessible of the Nobel Prize-winning Pinter’s plays, Betrayal has nevertheless historically had its detractors amongst the critics. However, those who filed overnight after last night’s offering were completely won over by Michel’s “finely nuanced” production, which caused one to completely retract his original 1978 rubbishing of the play and another to declare it “a masterly production of a masterpiece … I can’t recommend it too highly”. There was strong praise all round for the actors, too, with critics especially warm towards Samuel West for his “superbly observed” performance as the betrayed husband Robert.
Michael Coveney for Whatsonstage.com (four stars) – “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 ... Toby Stephens as Jerry and Samuel West as Robert are exactly the right sort of young forty-ish age, and Dervla Kirwan, the bewitching Irish actress from True Kiss Dare and Ballykissangel on television, has the ideal slow and steady serenity that absorbs the emotional punches while irradiating both pain and pleasure at their memory.”
Michael Billington in the Guardian (four stars) – “Another Betrayal? It's only four years since Peter Hall's production of Pinter's time-reversing play about the labyrinthine nature of deceit. Roger Michell's revival is more than justified by its mix of physical fluidity, emotional precision, and accumulating sense of pain ... Superbly played by Samuel West, Robert initially seems a cold, calculating bastard viewing the fluctuations of adultery with sublime indifference … This in no way diminishes the other performances. Dervla Kirwan as Emma has the capacity to act thought … Toby Stephens invests the adulterous Jerry with a paradoxical innocence … The virtue of Michell's production is it leaves no crevice unexplored; and it is much aided by William Dudley's design which, with its swirling white curtains, beautifully counterpoints the formal symmetry of Pinter's exquisitely crafted play. Having rubbished it back in 1978, I am happier than ever to eat my words.”
Paul Taylor in the Independent – “Drama that unfolds backwards is usually a pang-inducing progression from experience to relative innocence, as when in Sondheim's musical Merrily We Roll Along, the compromised middle-aged characters shed their layers of cynicism and re-emerge as their youthful idealistic selves. Betrayal is different. It's as though we are tracing a stream to its poisoned source … This comes over very clearly in Roger Michell's excellent, finely nuanced revival at the Donmar. A play whose structure puts the audience in the position of knowing the outcome could feel clinical and detached. But the sadness hits you as each moment incubates future pain … Emma's development is superbly charted in reverse by Dervla Kirwan. At the end of the relationship, she's angrily indignant and self-possessed … West brilliantly delivers Robert's lethally barbed banter but also gives you, in bouts of displaced fury, glimpses of a man crying out for help. Toby Stephens, who plays the weaker Jerry, brings out all the absurdity of the fact that he feels principally betrayed by Robert ... The shower-like curtains are an ugly mistake.”
Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph – “I have never seen the play better performed than it is here in a sparely designed, beautifully acted production by Roger Michell that uncovers every irony, every nuance of feeling and shaft of bitter humour in Pinter’s tremendous script. Toby Stephens plays Jerry with puppyish charm but also brings a depth of pain and vulnerability one rarely encounters in Pinter … Dervla Kirwan combines a throaty sexiness and natural warmth with moments when she seems to retreat into herself, and withhold herself from both the men in her life, neither of whom are capable of possessing her completely … Best of all, perhaps, is Samuel West, who brings a scary chill to the stage as the cuckolded Robert, rejoicing in the power of knowledge even as he suffers the humiliation of betrayal … This is a masterly production of a masterpiece and I can’t recommend it too highly.”
Nicholas de Jongh in the Evening Standard (four stars) – “In this least Pinteresque and most straightforward of all his plays, one which lacks the familiar whiff of menace or the shift between dream and realism, the lovers who lie together, lie to each other. It is the Anglo-Saxon way until reticence becomes unbearable ... In Michell's production, with William Dudley's white muslin drapes swirling artily around the stage, Pinter's flash-backing procedures allow something more than secret sexual attachment to loom large... Despite the edgy introversion of Betrayal's characters and their irritating excess of social, very small talk, Michell's production rivets the attention. Genuine emotion, that dreaded, un-Anglo Saxon attendant at any feast of confession and plain-speaking, memorably breaks out. West's superbly observed Robert, in old-fashioned clothes and invested with stiff, prim formality, as if a corset had been placed round a breaking heart, finally flares up while lunching with Jerry and rages over his publishing career… How thrilling to watch Pinter's characters at last shedding their inhibitions and succumbing to spiritual striptease.”
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 Michael Bakewell, the TV producer. The characters are transplanted in Jerry, a literary agent, Emma and her husband Robert, a publisher. Jerry and Emma meet in a pub at noon. We track them backwards to the love-nest in Kilburn, a flat they maintained for their afternoon trysts, sadly devoid of their passion.
The pivot of the play is the 1971 trip of Robert and Emma to Venice, where he collects a letter for her from American Express and recognises his best friend’s handwriting. Jerry, confident that the affair has been conducted with faultless discretion, never knew – now learns – that Robert knew about it for over half of its duration. Robert himself has had several affairs. The marriage is broken, which is why Emma has asked to meet Jerry in the pub.
In the end, friendship abides, just about, which is Pinter’s main theme. Some commentators detect an even deeper friendship between Robert and Jerry than between either of them with Emma. I’m not sure about this. There are just different levels of connection, and the various voltages are beautifully suggested in Roger Michell’s subtle and quick production, which has a dream cast.
Toby Stephens as Jerry and Samuel West as Robert are exactly the right sort of young forty-ish age, and Dervla Kirwan, the bewitching Irish actress from True Kiss Dare and Ballykissangel on television, has the ideal slow and steady serenity that absorbs the emotional punches while irradiating both pain and pleasure at their memory. She brought a lace tablecloth from Venice for the spartan apartment. She lays it out with love like a votive offering and now contemplates the bareness of the table with a shattering sense of loss.
Stephens exudes all the raffish, boyish charm that is his trademark while adding new notes of frailty and aghast surprise at the unravelling. West is as dry as a biscuit, as clipped as a neat suburban hedge, but he breaks down mightily over lunch with Robert, glugging his wine with vengeful dedication.
The affair has done more than hasten the end of his marriage; it has completely undermined their friendship. Michell’s speedy production (90 minutes, no interval) is abetted by William Dudley’s design of white curtains, moving rapidly around the scenes like hospital screens on an emergency ward where life is draining away, inevitably and inexorably.
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? - Gareth James
19 Jul 07
Dervla Kirwan is, quite simply, stunning. She is a remarkable actress and tonight gave us, Pinter style, a tortured creature betrayed for love. Sam West too, betrayed by his wife and best friend, gives a memorable study in controlled angst. I would have given 5 stars had Toby Stephens not let the side down. In my opinion, having also seen his Hamlet (more Camplet) he's too lightweight a performer for this. Comedy he can do, he's engaging enough, got a nice smile, but that's about it. This should have been a great production. Even so I still found myself mesmerised by Ms Kirwan. Even when she is not performing it was hard to take one's eyes off her. The design very contrived, all those curtains swishing about the place, but this is a Pinter play, and it's all contrived anyway. Mr Dudly takes us from Kilburn to Tuscany with a swish of a curtain, now that's worth a star in itself! - rds
13 Jul 07
Great acting and a master class from Sam West. Bloody silly curtains (almost as bad as the bloodly stupid gauze box in 'Old Times'). - Joesmith
29 Jun 07
I too found Toby Stephens, Dervla Kirwan, and Sam West superb in this and could not get enough. In response to Mr. Baxter, what prevents the reverse chronology from being a mere exercise is that it is one of the earliest uses of this method to tell a story--quite unique in its time. Perhaps now, in 2007, with movies such as Memento, we can say that the device is no longer fresh, but that issue shouldn't touch such an excellent--some think the best--production of this masterful classic. Highly recommended. - N Spooner
26 Jun 07
Betrayal is the play that famously tells the story of an affair in reverse and the intimacy of the Donmar allows the audience to be drawn inside the emotional triangle. Toby Stephens and Samuel West could have been born to play the pompous self-satisfied Islington lierati and Dervla Kirwan is superb as Emma, beautifully conveying the changing emotions of the wife/mistress, although I rather missed her lovely native Irish accent. The structure of the play allows us to consider the various betrayals or if they really can be betrayals if one party knows the "secret" and is even complicit in it's beginning. My only reservation is that if the story was not told in reverse it would be trite and ordinary so is Betrayal more a dramatic exercise than a great play? - David Baxter
15 Jun 07
Can't recommend it highly enough. When it finished last night, I wanted the cast to come back on and do the whole thing agin. (yes, even the dreadfully uncomfortable Donmar seats couldn't dissuade me). - Kev
14 Jun 07
I came prepared with an open mind but at the same time concerned that I'd be dragged down and depressed by Betrayal. And although I felt the desolation of a doomed love triangle I laughed and related to the situations - all due to the superb and finely crafted performances of all three actors - its not often that I've felt compelled to post my views but such skillful and empassioned acting from Toby Stephens, Sam West and Dervla Kirwan deserved to be recognised many, many times over! - Elkie
13 Jun 07
3 wonderful performances! fantastic acting all round. - Burton
Re-opened in 1992. Seats 254. 1999 - Ambassador Theatre Group takes over from the Associated Capital Theatres as the landlord of the Donmar Warehouse. 2002 - Michael Grandage succeeds Sam Mendes as Artistic Director of the Donmar. Nick Frankfort succeeds Caro Newling as Executive Producer.
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