Theatre

Harold Pinter’s reputation has had its ups and downs and one of the definite low points was the opening of ‘Betrayal’ at the National Theatre in 1978. The tale of adultery among the literary set felt like a sell-out to those who had championed ‘The Homecoming’ and ‘The Caretaker’. But since then opinion has radically changed and the play has become one of his most popular, capturing with forensic precision – but without making any moral judgments – the corrosive impact of an affair on the lives of those involved.

The play famously begins at the end, in 1977, and with a little shuffle in the middle, ends with the beginning in 1968, the beginning that is of an affair between Emma and Jerry, her husband’s best man and best friend. The betrayals are manifold but one of the most crucial occurs when Robert, Emma’s husband, drunkenly barges in as Jerry is first chatting up Emma. Roger Michell’s production highlights this more clearly than any I’ve seen. With a party hat perched on his head, Samuel West’s Robert chooses to ignore the pair’s obvious discomfiture. By putting his arm round Jerry, he saves his friendship at the expense of his marriage.

All three actors – Dervla Kirwan, Toby Stephens and Samuel West – are impressive, but West is outstanding, seething with rage and despair beneath his clenched grin. He’s horribly scary when he says that he’s hit his wife ‘once or twice’, and there’s a feeling in Venice that he may well hit her again. Kirwan as Emma acts with her eyes more than anything else. Her voice is rather breathy and her intonation too monotonous for Pinter’s crystalline prose, but it’s impossible to take one’s own eyes off her as she registers that Robert has discovered her infidelity. William Dudley’s design – consisting of white curtains snaking across the stage – creates an appropriately clinical atmosphere in which the painful events come under Pinter’s microscope.