BETRAYAL. To 21 July.
London
BETRAYAL
by Harold Pinter
Donmar Warehouse To 21 July 2007
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu & Sat 2.30pm
Audio-described 7 July 2.30pm (+ Touch Tour 1.30pm)
BSL Signed 26 June
Captioned 11 July
Runs 1hr 30min No interval
TICKETS: 0870 060 6624
www.donmarwarehouse.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 9 June
Fine revival of a play always worth seeing again.
This isn’t the only piece to use a reverse-time sequence, as its action spools back from 1977 to 1969, the period of an affair between publisher’s wife Emma and literary agent Jerry. Three years later Stephen Sondheim’s 1981 Merrily We Roll Along would use the same device to sew together a disillusioned musical partnership, traced back to its seeds in idealistic youth.
Pinter shows desire from the hindsight of a post-affair meeting. As with so many aspects of the playwright’s initially puzzling-seeming plays, what once appeared mere dramatic style turns out to be rooted in the necessity of telling the story. Roger Michell’s exciting Donmar revival of this oft-seen play duly leaves an impression of inevitability.
How would Emma and Jerry recall those years, other than through the most immediate memories of endgame anger and disillusion, eventually snaking back through key events before reaching the remote moment of awkward, initial exhilaration? And it explains the way some scenes are grouped, moving forward a short time around key events, before the backward reel recommences.
What makes this so evident here are the character’s emotional drives, unsettling the glacial self-possession often seen in Pinter productions. From the first (or last, so to speak) smiles and anxious expressions, tension and relaxation, oscillate between Emma and Jerry, as they will later between any combination of characters (often just two together, or when the men meet, Emma becomes sidelined).
As the wronged-husband-in-the-know for a lot longer than he lets on (if Emma and Jerry exclude him, the married pair exclude Jerry from secrets for years), Samuel West’s Robert shows that his most evident outburst, displaced onto a briefly-seen Waiter, is the effusion of pent-up emotion about his friend and his wife. Sometimes, it would seem, in that order; the last scene, where Jerry and Emma meet and kiss, ends here with the two men’s embrace of masculine solidarity.
Like confused memories, the years float past as projections on to flimsy white curtains sweeping around the performers. Dervla Kirwan’s often-anxious Emma, Samuel West’s intense Robert and Toby Stephens as a brooding, watchful Jerry are all excellent.
Jerry: Toby Stephens
Emma: Dervla Kirwan
Robert: Samuel West
Waiter: Paul di Rollo
Director: Roger Michell
Designer: William Dudley
Lighting: Rick Fisher
Sound: John Owens
Composer: Alec Dankworth
Video: Alan and Alec Cox
Dialect coach: Jan Haydn Rowles
Assistant director: Alex Sims
2007-06-13 16:27:43