Betrayal

by Harold Pinter

seen at the Harold Pinter Theatre on 17 May 2019

Jamie Lloyd directs Tom Hiddleston as Robert, Zawe Ashton as Emma (his wife) and Charlie Cox as Jerry (his best friend) in a superb revival of Pinter's play about a the inricacies ad emotional costs of betrayal.

The design by Soutra Gilmour is mesmerisingly austere - a pastel shaded backdrop which occasionally slides forward; a grey floor containing a two-part revolve; a couple of chairs; at one stage a flimsy fold-out table; a few bottles of drinks (water or wine). This forces all the attention on the actors and on the psychological processes of the characters, and allows for maximum fluidity in a play that famously presents its story in reverse, starting with a meeting between Emma and Jerry two years after their seven-year affair has ended, and working gradually backwards until the first occasion on which Jerry confessed his love for Emma.

The actors rise to the occasion and the result is utterly compelling. Tom Hiddleston's Robert, quietly spoken but fiercely alive to the pain his wife's affair causes him, indicates the boiling anger he is suppressing with a contained passion that occasionally bursts out in extraordinary attacks on food or in a menacing speech about playing squash. Charlie Cox's Jerry is more relaxed, thinking that on the whole he is in control (a idea punctured early for us but late for him) but at times panicked by the danger of admitting things he should not know. Zawe Ashton's Emma remains somewhat enigmatic, but her attraction to both men is believable, as is a certain steely sense of self-preservation.

The play is not easy to watch, as the curious time structure requires complete attention to keep track of what is happening; and of course Pinter  is masterful at providing information about character and situation by implication and insinuation, so that what is not being said is as important as the spoken words. The audience was at times bemused by this challenge, expecting perhaps something lighter and more approachable, but on the whole there was a rapt silence in the packed theatre, encouraged by the deceptively intimate and coverstional tone of the actors' delivery. Only occasionally was the dialogue too quiet to hear clearly; otherwise it was almost like overhearing private agony.

The staging was brilliant, with all three characters on stage almost throughout. Almost all the scenes are two-handers - Emma and Jerry; Emma and Robert; Robert and Jerry. But the third (absent) person was silently on stage, usually placed on the revolve and thus slowly  moving, a reminder that he or she must be in the minds of the speakers even when not physically present. The made Pinter' exposure of the intricate ramifications of betrayal even more powerful, and simply wonderful to watch.