Pinter-Patter

By T.E. Kalem

BETRAYAL by Harold Pinter

Imagine an instant replay--not in slow motion, but in reverse. That is what Harold Pinter has done in depicting an adulterous love affair. It is over in the first of nine scenes, and it begins just before the curtain drops. This is a clever conceit. Pinter, as we have much past reason to know, cannot write a wrong line--or a dull pause. The key actors, Raul Julia, Blythe Banner and Roy Scheider, are marvels of professional finesse, and Peter Hall's direction is ticktock perfect in its precision.

Yet the net effect is that of watching a campaign that a MacArthur or a Rommel might have mounted with toy soldiers. The stakes are not high. The people are not emotionally engaging. And such pin-flares of love as do appear seem to have been struck from a wet match. Obsessed as Pinter is by rooms, the drawing room seems to make him a trifle uneasy. Betrayal is a kind of bittersweet Noel Coward comedy in which the people are brittle, and more laconic than witty.

Chronologically, Jerry (Julia) makes a slightly tipsy pass at Emma (Danner), the wife of his best friend Robert (Scheider) at a party at Robert's house. In one of those chemically combustible instants, their eyes hold. Their hands and hearts follow. Jerry is a literary agent, Robert is a publisher, Emma runs an art gallery, London sophisticates all. Jerry and Emma rent and decorate a suburban flat for illicit afternoons, which begin rosily but develop nagging thorns.

About halfway through the seven-year liaison, Robert and Emma go to Venice for a vacation, and it becomes obliquely clear that Robert knows about the affair. Perhaps he knew all along. Who knew what, when, constitutes the sole suspense factor of the evening. A confirmed philanderer, Robert is not about to incite a showdown. But it goes rather deeper than that, into the realm of male bonding. Jerry does not really feel remorse about betraying his unseen wife, but he feels terribly guilty about betraying his best friend. Similarly, Robert complains that they never play squash any more, a symbol that they are no longer close.

Pinter probably has fewer women in his dramas than any other major modern playwright. When they do appear, they are almost invariably presented as mothers or whores. In his superbly crafted and deeply felt The Homecoming, he merged both roles in the sibylline central figure of Ruth. In that sense Betrayal is a dramatically interesting departure, for Emma is not really a mother/whore character. It is also a mettlesome test for Blythe Danner, who is one of the most formidably gifted younger actresses on the U.S. stage. Otherwise, Betrayal, which contains the most pauses of any Pinter play, is something of a pause itself in a portentous playmaking career. --T.E.Kalem

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.