Theatre review: Betrayal

For those who saw the good, dated, funny, unfunny and sometimes fascinating six-month long season of mainly little-known Pinter shorts curated by director Jamie Lloyd, this was the prize, a production as classy as a flute of champagne and a cast — Tom Hiddleston, Charlie Cox and Zawe Ashton — who look so cool and chic as the curtain rises, you immediately fear that Lloyd’s production might be a case of style over substance.

But no. There is plenty of substance to Pinter’s 1978 dissection of an affair. And although telling a story in reverse doesn’t today feel quite like the act of a creative genius it might have 40 years ago, you’re struck by the immense care with which Pinter constructs his late masterpiece.

Things said in passing are later revealed to have huge significance. And underpinning it all is the poignancy that comes from knowing people’s fate before seeing their more innocent past.

The work opens with a halting exchange between Cox’s Jerry — a literary agent — and Ashton’s Emma — a gallery owner. They haven’t seen each other since their affair ended years ago. But, last night, Emma confessed it to her husband Robert — a publisher— much to Jerry’s horror. For Robert is Jerry’s best friend.

In the next scene the play seems as if it will continue in conventional style. Jerry meets Robert in an apparent act of contrition. But what emerges is anything but conventional. Robert, it turns out, is eerily unconcerned. He’s known about it for years, which leaves Charlie first dumbstruck and then outraged as if Robert’s unspoken knowledge of the betrayal was more of a betrayal than the affair itself.

But what really sets Pinter’s conception apart is that the next scene is set further back in time. Jerry and Emma are in the painful process of ending the affair and, as the time-line reverses further, everyone becomes slightly less damaged. Ashton’s haunted Emma becomes happier as shame lifts its shadow from Cox. But it is Hiddleston’s performance that defines the evening. When we first encounter him, he’s a hollowed-out man whose civility is expressed with smiles that fail to reach the eyes. As the play progresses — actually regresses — he intricately maps out the steps that lead to cynicism.

Meanwhile, the passage of time is evoked by a revolving stage that moves to the metallic clicks and ticks of a clock.

The milestones of the affair — all seven years of it— hove in and out of view to the moment it all began and the children’s parents had yet to be rent asunder.