BETRAYAL. To 8 October.

Colchester

BETRAYAL
by Harold Pinter

Mercury Theatre To 8 October 2005
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 6, 8 Oct 2.30pm
Audio-described 8 Oct 2.30pm
BSL Signed 6 Oct 7.30pm
Post-show discussion 5 Oct
Runs 1hr 40min One interval

TICKETS: 01206 573948
boxoffice@mercurytheatre.co.uk
www.mercurytheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 3 October

Lefton's 3rd Mercury production is as detailed and perceptive as its predecessors.Harold Pinter's 1978 play is among his most popular, having less upfront aggression than earlier pieces while initially seeming, as its 9 scenes snake irregularly back across 9 years of a love affair, less enigmatic than its near contemporaries Old Times and No Man's Land.

Sue Lefton's fine production incorporates Pinter's famous techniques of silence, subtext and menace within realistic comedy in a way one could term Leftonesque. So the irritation Roger Delves-Broughton's publisher Robert shows in a London Italian restaurant over lunch with his friend Jerry, a writers' agent, is, along with his excessive wine intake, related to his wife Emma's recent revelation of her affair with Jerry - Robert's irritation by association with the Waiter reflecting the revelation's taking place on holiday in Italy.

Lefton builds through such detail as this, or Delves-Broughton and Ignatius Anthony's Jerry gesturing in a schoolboyish code they've created whenever referring to a novelist they represent. The end makes such male camaraderie transparent. The final scene, showing the start of Jerry and Emma's affair, ends with the men hugging then all 3 snaking around each other.

It points to a play that implies multiple treacheries in its 3-way relationships, the script's economic ambiguities caught in the hard, sparse surfaces of Adrian Lindford's angular, semi-abstract set. It's a restless, comfortless space, where the occasional, temporary splash of softness or colour stands out, and where Shuna Snow's Emma cannot find a comfortable position in which to read a novel fidgeting in a chair or holding it achingly at arms length while lying on the floor.

Snow makes a down-to-earth Emma, more real, if less iconic, than some productions have offered. She has a practicality, sitting huddled in her coat talking to her ex-lover after the affair's over, while she beautifully charts, like a film reeling in reverse, changes from physical aversion to a gratuitous kiss, then the passionate desire of early stages. This is a woman in the world, not in men's imaginations. With Anthony's leather-jacketed, wary Jerry and Delves-Broughton's study in repressed dissatisfaction it makes for a near-perfect evening, spoiled only by the intrusive interval: an artistic loss, if no doubt good for bar-profits.

Jerry: Ignatius Anthony
Waiter: Tony Casement
Robert: Roger Delves-Broughton
Emma: Shuna Snow

Director: Sue Lefton
Designer: Adrian Linford
Lighting: Tony Simpson

2005-10-04 15:16:35