BETRAYAL. To 11 May.

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BETRAYAL
by Harold Pinter

Clwyd Theatr Cymru (Emlyn Willams Theatre) To 11 May 2002

Runs 1hr 45min No interval
Mon-Sat 7.45 Mat Sat 2.45pm
TICKETS 01352 755114
Review Timothy Ramsden 27 April

Another fine Clwyd revival, distinguished by an outstanding performance.Like Pinter's 1978 examination of an adultery rewinding across a decade from end to beginning, the Emlyn Williams is a between-sizes affair. The play's like a short novel or long novella. The theatre's intimate enough to focus attention on facial and vocal minutiae. Yet it has also an epic sense, aided by Mark Bailey's minimalist design – a mere chair or table as required for each sccne, against a repeated pattern of lighting 'bubbles', among which characters are picked out by brighter shafts, creating temporary oases or harsh exposure.

As the adulterous agent Jerry, Steffan Rhodri might limit the character by concentrating on dry-voiced sarcasm at the fag end of the affair, but earlier he's shown a genuine enthusiasm for his friendship with the publisher with whose wife he shares a secret nook in Kilburn. For the men, the emotional crisis comes at different times. Robert Perkins' husband injects a forceful hurt and contained violence to the holiday in Venice when he first suspects, then discovers, his wife's relationship.

Who is betrayed? Repeatedly, even at the end (the play's end; the affair's beginning), the two men stand – and often enough drink - together. There's a male understanding which cuts across any sexual liaison, isolating the woman.

And that's caught beautifully by Vivien Parry's Emma, in silence and the eyes. At the opening, re-meeting when all's been over some time, she's left alone and looks slowly around. In a sense, what follows is about explaining the feelings – questions, memories, regrets? – in that gaze.

Later/earlier, in Venice, she sits, reading a new novel, her husband standing behind massaging her neck, probing the suspicious letter from Jerry he's discovered at the local bureau. Robert's hands could turn to strangling at any moment. So she sits, stranded, isolated, threatened. As he talks, her eyes stare ahead and a spoken confession comes. But the drama's in the look, exposing the mind that knows secrecy is over.

At once unknowable and vulnerable, contrasting in such moments the happy lover's confidence of the knee-length skirt and open smile we are yet to see, Parry's Emma is increasingly the emotional focus of this fine Pinter revival.

Emma: Vivien Parry
Jerry: Steffan Rhodri
Robert: Robert Perkins
Waiter: Johnson Willis

Director/Lighting: Terry Hands
Designer: Mark Bailey
Sound: Matthew Williams

2002-04-29 08:08:42