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Betrayal |
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Author: Harold Pinter
Reviewer: Carolyn Albert for Theatre Reviews Limited |
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If you've never seen "Betrayal," this is an interesting first encounter - a top-grade production of a complex play.
In 1978, HAROLD PINTER's "Betrayal" caused a sensation in that the time sequence would be played backward. Chronological events would go in reverse, from the present to nine years earlier. Even now, twenty-two years later, the result is still startling.
  
Anyone who misses the stage shows at Radio City Music Hall or missed the Ziegfeld Follies can find happiness and fulfillment at the Ford Center for the Arts where quick-changes and kaleidoscopic patterns of waving gams, a la MGM musicals, are brought to splendid real life.
As subsequent scenes reveal previous events, we, the audience, would understand things that the characters clearly do not yet know. Certainly, we know more about the characters than do their intimates. We not only foresee the future, realizing how their actions play out, but also realize the devastating impact of casual words.
Therefore, this is an active play, requiring careful attention because one must recall what was said earlier. Also, one becomes acutely - perhaps even painfully aware of what was not said. In a drama heavy with the weight of almost every line, two factors dominate. The first is timing. Scholars and critics have made much about the pauses between lines in this Pinter play. These occasional pauses are necessary to give the listener a moment to reflect upon what has gone before (that is, what will be in the future for these characters). Since not every line has secondary meaning, the actors' and director's understandings of the play is critical; they must know when to pause and for how many milliseconds.
Even more critical is the need for expressive performances. Unless the actors can create sympathy for their pain, our response would be scorn rather than profound concern. The cuckolded husband has been having his own affairs all along (we learn early) so we don't see him despondent over his wife's affair. That straying wife was too easily seduced, swept up by a single utterance of desperate passion. And the seducer is himself married with no intention of leaving his own wife, yet unable to control his lust for his best friend's wife.
A great deal must be conveyed through facial expression and body language. I very much appreciated the opportunity to sit up close to experience the subtleties in the actors' expressions.
The first scene takes place closest to the present time when a Emma (JULIETTE BINOCHE) and Jerry (LIEV SCHREIBER) meet in a pub and talk about the past. Emma tells Jerry that her husband, Robert (JOHN SLATTERY) has been having an affair, and they are splitting up. She also tells Jerry that she told Robert of her seven-year affair with Jerry, an affair that was over two years ago. In the subsequent scene that occurs a bit later that same day, Robert tells Jerry that Emma had told him of their affair four years earlier (two years before they ended the affair). In this play about deception, everyone lies at one point or another, but we're not always sure who is lying or why. In this as in other Pinter plays, not every mystery will be resolved.
It isn't easy to follow the sequence of reverse time. The program tells you how far you're going back (or occasionally forward just a bit as a scene is played out "later that day"), but in a dark theater it's often hard to consult the program. One might wish that there were a placard, as in vaudeville, to signal where we are.
Next scene is of that breakup between Emma and Jerry that had taken place two years earlier. This scene is the most difficult to fathom because they are so cool and unexpressive. In fact, by the end of the play, it is difficult to reconcile these torpid, emotionally-stifled folks with the impulsively passionate Emma and Jerry we finally get to meet in a scene that takes place a full nine years before the first scene.
Liev Schreiber's later Jerry transformed most from the man he was - his youthful spontaneity and passion turned into an almost frustrating inability to communicate emotion. In this pondering of cause and effect, we wonder if it was a loss of passion that led to the end of the affair - or did that affair transmute them into the colorless people they end up being.
While Schreiber's is the most satisfactory of the three performances, each of the three sides of the triangle needs equal strength. Juliette Binoche looked lovely enough to seduce any man, but we didn't see her ambivalence or suffering. In addition, she was often inaudible - even to those who sat reasonably close. As a man betrayed and betraying, John Slattery, fine in other plays like "Three Days of Rain," didn't convey that below his consistently icy surface there was much smoldering. MARK LOTITO appeared in a supporting role.
Direction by DAVID LEVEAUX made unadorned statements. The set by ROB HOWELL (who also designed the costumes) was spare and minimal. For example, the set for a pub has a table, two chairs, and a door. A bedroom has a bed and a door. Always, there is that door - suggesting the exit that will be made. Costumes and lighting reflect the emotional tones of the relationship, going from later dull to earlier scarlet. Lighting by DAVID WEINER also changes from scene to scene, drab at first, brighter later, with the final scenes played in deep and dramatic shadows.
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Produced by Roundabout Theatre Company
Theater: American Airlines Theatre, 227 West 42nd Street.
Schedule: Tuesday - Saturday at 8, Saturday & Sunday at 2.
Tickets: $40-65 at Roundabout Ticket Services: 212/719-1300 or at the Box
Office.
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