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.

No Man's Land

by Harold Pinter

seen at Wyndhams Theatre on 16 November 2016

Sean Matthias directs this revival of Pinter's 1975 play with Ian McKellan as Spooner, Patrick Stewart as Hirst, Owen Teale as Briggs and Damien Molony as Foster; the set is designed by Stephen Brimson Lewis.

Hirst has invited Spooner - a shambling down-at-heels writer - back to his house in Hampstead, an eerily grand affair featuring a room with a curved wall of rather cold blue panels, with a well-stocked bar. Hirst, also apparently a writer, seems bemused by Spooner's meandering speeches, though some of his responses are extremely sharp, even if only by way of a look of mock alarm or distaste. Each drinks heavily as Spooner attempts to discover the nature of the household and Hirst gives little away; suddenly two retainers appear, the brutish Briggs and the cocky and almost camp Foster. They might be dangerous for Spooner - they might even have some hold over Hirst: they are blankly watchful when Hirst collapses and crawls out of the room.

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.