Betrayal

by Harold Pinter

seen at the Sumner Theatre (Melbourne) on 19 September 2015

The play, directed by Geordie Brookman and designed by Geoff Cobham, is a production from the State Theatre Company of South Australia. It stars Alison Bell as Emma, Mark Saturno as Robert (her husband) and Nathan O'Keefe as Jerry (her lover, and Robert's closest friend), with John Maurice as the waiter.

'Betrayal' works backwards from a scene in 1977 when the affair between Emma and Jerry has been over for some time, but her marriage is finally breaking up, through glimpses of scenes in earlier years which throw light on events we the audience have already been told about, to the party in 1968 during which the affair began. This is not really a series of flashbacks, since there is never a return to a 'present moment' in which flashbacks might be presumed to have taken place. Each scene is rather its own 'present moment', and only our prior knowledge of later events colours it in an unusual way. The result of this arrangement is that we soon learn to pay the closest attention to everything that is revealed, since so many details influence our understanding of the events as they are recollected by the characters later in their lives but earlier in our witnessing of them.

There are many small betrayals woven throughout this play, emanating from the most obvious, the liaison between Emma and Jerry which betrays both Emma's marriage and Jerry's friendship. At this level, Robert is the most clearly betrayed, but Jerry feels betrayed when he realises that Emma has told Robert about the affair, and even more so when he discovers that he has misinterpreted her account of when this betrayal took place. The daily deceptions of managing an affair take their toll, not least when the three characters are together but maintaining their necessary facades.

All this is well handled by the cast, who manage the carefully written script, with its trademark hesitations and silences, with considerable proficiency. The stage design cleverly echoes the enclosed atmosphere of the play by using a huge curved wardrobe rail, hung with all the characters' clothing over the years, to encircle the acting space, concealing it while the time changes take place, and acting as a backdrop to each scene, and as a permanent reminder of the disguises and subterfuges entailed by all the acts of betrayal we witness.

The principal drawback to the performance is that each actor clearly had a microphone used to enhance the sound. It is bad enough that modern musicals use this technique, but it seems totally misapplied to a Pinter play, where the clink of ice in a drink, or the breathing of the actor, was unnecessarily amplified. An usher explained that the acoustics of the theatre required the use of microphones (as well as the provision for a hearing aid loop), and a friend confirmed that the theatre, though relatively recently built, was inadequate in this respect.