Based on Harold Pinter’s own extramarital affair with Joan Bakewell, Betrayal tells the story of Emma who is having an affair with Jerry, her husband Robert’s best friend.
The narrative of the affair is told backwards – the play opens with Emma (Zawe Ashton) and Jerry (Charlie Cox) meeting for a drink a couple of years after the end of their affair, and then various scenes during the course of their seven year long affair follow, until their initial betrayal. Although most of the scenes only include two characters, Jamie Lloyd as director never lets us forget who is being betrayed by having the third actor on the stage at all times. This is even more effective in one scene with Jerry and Emma where Robert (Tom Hiddleston) is sat cradling his and Emma’s daughter.
The set for this production is very simple – three moving pastel coloured walls, two chairs and a revolving stage. Although this maybe wasn’t effective in showing Emma’s desire to furnish the flat that she and Jerry used for their trysts, and to make it a kind of home, overall I felt the simplicity worked very well, and meant that the audience could focus on the performances.
Speaking of the performances, all three actors are fantastic. Zawe Ashton is tender as Emma and is completely believable as someone who is in love with two people. Hiddleston is initially brusque as Robert, but his heartbreak when he learns of Emma and Jerry’s affair is evident as his eyes fill with tears. He then also shows his comedic side as he aggressively stabs his melon during a restaurant scene with Jerry, barely managing to contain his anger at his friend. All three use Pinter’s infamous pauses to great effect, demonstrating the simmering tension between the three characters, which was at times almost unbearable.
The only other Pinter play I’ve seen is No Man’s Land, and although I enjoyed the performances in that one, I didn’t ‘get’ the play at all. Betrayal for me is a much stronger play, and much more accessible.
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