Pinter's 'Betrayal' charts family tree of lies

By Barry Levey

It's a bold beginning. Like the Kaufman and Hart play that (somewhat perversely) inspired it, Harold Pinter's Betrayal starts with its ending. Each scene that follows takes us further and further backward in time. "Everything's over," his characters say in the opening scene. That's not quite true. In K&H's Merrily We Roll Along, everything certainly is over at the beginning, leaving us no choice but to turn to the past for our dramatic action. Pinter's trump card, however, is that nothing is over--we could follow his three characters into the future just as easily as we could plumb their pasts. Unlike Merrily, Betrayal gives us what we really want: a key to the characters' tomorrows, even as we witness their yesterdays.

At stake are two families and three relationships, as Jerry (Patrick Egan, SY '97) instigates an affair with his best friend Robert's (Michael Pastor, TC '98) wife, Emma (Heidi Altman, SY '99). The play begins with the dissolution of Robert's and Emma's marriage (updated here to 1997), and follows the affair to its inception nine years earlier. Tackled along the way are, of course, issues of fidelity and betrayal, but more importantly, issues of reproduction. In a frame that refuses to move forward, Pinter reveals the insiduous way that lies multiply and spread between the two families.

Integral to this concept is the bizarre notion of male-male reproduction embodied by Jerry and Robert's long friendship. As a literary agent, Jerry is always finding talent for his buddy, a publisher. They share responsibility for conceiving, nurturing, and promoting new writers; indeed, the one thing all three of these characters have in common by the play's end (beginning?) is the unseen Casey, a novelist of questionable merit who has gotten the better of both his "parents." Jerry's affair with Emma only confuses this question of progeny, especially in light of the dubious parentage of Emma's young son. It is the replication of lies that ties these people to one another; it is the conception of lies that we witness by traveling backward through time.

Not surprisingly, it is this notion of time that seems to have posed the greatest difficulty for the current production in Nick Chapel. Director Aaron Cooley and his cast have done a fine job, but the subtler demands of Pinter's script are sometimes lost in the actors' relationships. In a play where the terms "years" and "some time now" take on precise numerical value, everyone must work overtime to discover what lies between the lines. We get no feeling for the love (or past love) between Robert and Emma. We get little feeling for the friendship (or past friendship) between the two men. The affair is portrayed more successfully, but almost too successfully. Our hearts should be breaking when the disastrous romance begins, but we're instead strangely eager for the lovebirds to get it on.

Individually, the actors shine. Egan hasn't had a role that's suited him better in the past two years. As Jerry, a man who cannot take other people's emotions into account even when his two closest friendships hang in the balance, Egan manages to make self-absorption oddly endearing, an essential quality for the character responsible for the tragedy that unfolds. Altman gives Emma a wistful, delusional longing that is simply heartbreaking; she's a doomed romantic, fleeing one loveless affair for another. Pastor faces the biggest challenge, and must play a man that Emma would leave but with whom the audience wants her to reconcile. He succeeds for the most part (awkward Britishisms like "quite right" aside); we like him more than we ought to, but we still don't see sparks between the couple.

The set, painted by Jin Hee Kim, TC '99, is notable for its simplicity--the walls bleed tellingly from a sterile, puke-grey into a red that is violently alive. The lighting design, by Patrick Jacobi, SY '98, tends to leave several distracting shadows onstage, however.

Cooley's direction is effective, but never quite gets what it needs from the performers. The levels are off; Robert is in hyperdrive, while Emma is so understated she seems to be on film. Cooley's main strength is in pacing his scenes. If the relationships were only more convincing, everything would be in place for the perfect level of rising tension.

Tension is, however, sorely lacking from the conclusion. The brilliance of Pinter's ending is the realization that, in going backwards, we have gone the wrong way. "Have you ever thought about changing your life?" Emma asks Jerry, followed shortly by Jerry's insistence at the very close, "nothing has ever happened." At the end of a play, especially one that begins with "everything's over," something should have happened. Shouldn't we have discovered some action by going backward in time? Pinter's ironic answer is no: we have gone the wrong way in time and cannot make any changes. The best is still to come in the future we're denied. Despite their occasional shortcomings, Cooley and company succeed in bringing this ultimate betrayal to light.

Back to A & E...