Pinter's 'Betrayal': a bitter, backward love triangle

COURTESY YALE REPERTORY THEATER Robert (Ritchie Coster) and Jerry (John Hines) discuss how depressing their affairs are.

The classic dramatic scenario of the love triangle is manifest in Harold Pinter's engaging character play, Betrayal, a mediation on the themes of marital infidelity, duplicity, and self-deception. Pinter writes a world that simultaneously glorifies and debases love.

In the Yale Repertory Theater's production of Betrayal, directed by Liz Diamond, three primary characters form the drama's core. The plot revolves around two couples, Robert (Ritchie Coster) and Emma (Stephanie Roth Haberle), and Jerry (John Hines) and the unseen Judith. Robert, Emma, and Jerry become involved in a web of infidelity: Emma and Jerry conduct a seven-year affair, which Robert discovers in its fourth year; Robert then cheats on Emma in turn.

The dramatic structure of the play is complicated by the scenes' anachronological order. The action begins at the end, with Jerry and Emma meeting two years after their affair has ended, as Emma's marriage with Robert is breaking up. From this point, the play regresses in time, concluding in 1968 with the tender beginnings of Emma and Robert's relationship.

Although all three actors do a marvelous job of portraying their characters convincingly and consistently, Haberle tackles the play's most challenging role with striking emotional clarity. Her Emma is a woman torn between husband and lover who must justify lying to Robert, but, more significantly, must justify lying to herself. We see in Emma a dynamic character who evolves from an innocent girl into a haunted, bitter woman—in 1968, she appears in a white dress, with bare feet and loose hair, whereas in 1977 she dresses conservatively and pulls her hair back severely. Her character's gradual evolution into a brittle, jaded woman is as evident in her appearance as in her face and words.

Pinter's brilliant script provides welcome levity in an emotionally challenging play. The exchanges between the three characters are nearly always awkward, strained encounters in which each character cloaks honesty with social pretense. In order to cover the silences with acceptable repartee, Emma, Robert, and Jerry engage in utterly ridiculous conversations. In one exchange between Robert and Jerry, Robert exclaims, "I'm a bad publisher because I hate books!"

Although the dialogue is often comical, it is frequently heavy with meaning. When Robert learns of Emma's infidelity through a letter addressed to his wife, he proceeds to deliver a poignant and ironic monologue critical of the postal worker's excessive trust, stating that even though he and Emma have the same last name, they could be "total strangers." In fact, they are—though the illusion of their marriage continues for several years, Emma and Robert are nearly as emotionally isolated from one another as two people who meet randomly on the street.

The set is fairly sparse—interesting enough, but never distracting. Some elements of the set act as windows into the characters' emotions and motivations. A Venetian lace tablecloth symbolizes Emma's attempt to create a home for herself and Robert, and a scotch glass acts as an indirect physical connection between Emma and her emotionally distant lover. The entire set is painted green, a detail that later becomes significant: Emma and Robert assume the last name of Green when renting a flat together. The staging of the last scene is especially symbolic. Emma sits at her dressing table, and the only source of light comes from the mirror that she uses. This illumination creates wonderful shadows, and later throws multiple images of Jerry's body against the set. These shadowy echoes of his material form make tangible the duplicity inherent in all of the characters.

The set, however, serves primarily to provide a backdrop for the moving, emotionally charged story that Betrayal tells. The most striking aspect of Pinter's play is its pregnant silences, which say far more than the often nonsensical, superficial dialogue. These silences uncover raw emotion, unobs-cured by the mask of language. The three actors convey their struggles remarkably clearly through body language and facial expression. In one particularly moving scene, as Robert and Emma's marriage disin-tegrates, Emma stands in front of her daughter's dollhouse, torn between her family and her lover. Robert enters the room, takes her in his arms, and kisses her, but Emma can only sob in return. Here we witness one of the few scenes between husband and wife that is completely devoid of artifice.

Betrayal is a richly textured drama that, by exposing social pretense and unmitigated emotions, draws us into the same complex world that we all inhabit. Pinter makes us believe simultaneously in the endurance and the transience of relationships, in the ecstasy and the pain of intimacy. Ironically, the play concludes with "All You Need is Love" playing in the background. Betrayal at once refutes and affirms the song's innocent assertion.

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