Betrayal: a bleak and fascinating journey back in time
11 Sep 2019

by Drew Rowsome - Photos by Dahlia Katz

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Betrayal begins as a brittle sophisticated comedy about infidelity, a modern Noel Coward. A man and a woman meet and through the course of their awkward conversation, and several drinks (everyone drinks constantly), we learn they had been having an affair for seven years. And that she is the wife of his best friend. The central mystery then becomes who knows about the affair, when they knew, and just what qualifies as a betrayal. There is much comedy to be made out of the woman, after the dissolution of her seven year affair, being annoyed that her husband has philandered.

The puzzle is solved by travelling back in time, the accompaniment of Richard Feren's evocative horror/wakka chikka wakka chikka score, and we experience the progression, the disintegration, of the affair in reverse. As one would expect from a reverse rom-com, it is a bleak if fascinating journey. Playwright Harold Pinter seems to believe that romance and sex are transactions or, in the case of the men, ways to win points in a competition. One of the main metaphors is that a game of squash is a perfect metaphor for love and marriage.

The reverse chronology works wonderfully for a theatrical event, even better than flashbacks, as the explosive passion occurs at the end. Though there is that bleakness again, the play builds and builds towards a moment full of fervor we know to be futile and possibly fake. While the moment is powerful, it is the opposite of cathartic. Betrayal is intellectually absorbing and intriguing, but, deliberately, emotionally ice cold.

That, and all the information and emotion in the dialogue being in the pauses not in the words, makes this a tricky piece for the actors. These characters are essentially repellent. All work as parasites on the arts and are quick to condemn creativity or genuine feelings. Pinter is satirizing the state of the arts and love in the late '70s when Betrayal was written. Sadly, it is still accurate. The triangle also lives in a bubble and though their children and the exclude wife are mentioned, they are immaterial. As the husband being cuckolded says, "Where does it take place? Must be a bit awkward. I mean we've got two kids, he's got two kids not to mention a wife."

The central affair is between Virgilia Griffith (Iphigenia and the Furies, Harlem Duet, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, The Wedding Party, They Say He Fell) and Ryan Hollyman (Human Animals, Macbeth) with Jordan Pettle (Sextet) as Griffith's husband and Hollyman's best friend. Despite Griffith being a radiant presence, both beautiful and cold, Betrayal is more concerned with the relationship between the two men. How whatever they feel for each other, and yes they are self-aware enough to recognize it, is sublimated into competition. There is an excruciating, both hard to watch and hilarious, scene where the men meet for lunch and abuse the waiter Paolo Santalucia (Four Chords and a Gun, Bed and Breakfast, The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?, Animal Farm, La Bete, Mustard, The Taming of the Shrew) instead of dealing with their own conflict. Each appalled at the other's behaviour and completely oblivious of their own.

They treat Griffith the same way. Pettle treats her as a possession and servant, Hollyman is only interested as long as she treats him as a sex object. Fortunately she is smart enough, and calculating enough, to pull herself above the fray but it is at the cost of becoming as emotionally bankrupt as the men. It is debatable as to whether that is better or worse than the naive young woman she is initially, or rather, finally. The three central actors also have to contend with some heavy imagery which they manage quite deftly. Pettle's fondest life moment is reading Yeats alone on a beach. While on his honeymoon. And he, a publisher, abhors books or "to be more precise, prose. Or to be even more precise, modern prose." Just as she, an art gallery owner, hangs no art on her walls.

Director Andrea Donaldson (Beautiful Man) keeps the inverse scene changes coherent and there is auxiliary fun to be had with Griffith's costume changes that are as lightning fast as the characters' skewering of each other. One change happens in full view and it is as if she is flaunting her desire to have nothing to hide. Or that may be me reading too much into a staging moment. It is hard not to parse for clues when presented with Pinter dialogue that reveals its secrets only in the pauses of the seemingly offhand remarks. This becomes self-satire when Betrayal reaches its climax with the one florid, beautiful, and utterly insincere speech of the evening. It is achingly gorgeous, absurdly funny, and heartbreakingly sad.

And caps off a brisk 90 minutes where our emotions and assumptions have been challenged with a mystery that is unanswerable and not only brittle but also bitter. It's hard to tell if Pinter feels for these characters trapped in their shallowness and competition, or if he mocks them. At least his intentions for the audience are clear, it is to entertain while provoking thought.