Thirty years on, Pinter's study of adultery remains as poignant as ever
Betrayal
Donmar Warehouse, London WC2
Just over ten years ago, it emerged that Harold Pinter and Joan Bakewell had had a seven-year affair that began in the 1960s, she while married to the TV producer Michael Bakewell, he while married to the actress Vivienne Merchant. The affair inspired his famous three-hander Betrayal. It was always known that the play, premiered in 1978, was autobiographical, but usually it was assumed that it documented Pinter's affair with and subsequent marriage to Antonia Fraser. Now that the truth is out, it rears up throughout this classy revival.
It is almost impossible to see the brunette Emma (Dervla Kirwan) without envisioning Joan, the "thinking man's crumpet", and her husband, the bluff Robert (Samuel West), as Michael. Meanwhile, Emma's lover and Robert's best friend, Jerry (Toby Stephens), is Harold, only a lot better-looking.
Naturally, the affair is conducted in a little rented flat in Kilburn. It would be. Emma and Robert have specifically chosen this area because it contains precisely none of their circle. The dialogue is of trips to Venice, home-made bread, casual Sunday lunches and fervent sex. If nothing else, Betrayal is a testimony to how the chattering class was launched.
Thankfully, the play is about more than that. Roger Michell's production is as crisp and deliberate as the white drapes that swish back and forth over William Dudley's minimal, Habitat-accessorised set. The action moves back in time from 1977 to 1969. Intriguingly, the play begins two years after the affair has ended. Emma and Jerry are having a tense "So, how are you?" meeting. Eventually, she tells him that her marriage is over, thanks to her discovery of Robert's serial infidelities. She also confesses she has come clean about their own affair. Jerry, horrified, goes straight to see Robert, who casually informs him that he has known about it for years.
"What are we going to do?" asks Jerry, aghast. "You and I aren't going to do anything," responds Robert, casually. His insouciance is breathtaking. It is only as the play unwinds that you realise Robert's careless attitude belies a broken man.
This play is, indeed, about betrayal, but not only that between man and wife. It is more poignantly about the betrayal of intense male friendship, the metaphor for which is the game of squash. As Robert puts it, squash is all about the game, plus the subsequent shower, pint and lunch. What's more, the whole thing must be done without women.
"That's what it's all about," he says. Squash, a game that must be played with "brutal honesty", represents all that is good and noble about male camaraderie. Of course, if you are shagging your best friend's wife, you cannot play squash. Once he has got into Emma's underwear, Jerry always finds he has some reason not to play Robert.
Dervla Kirwan captures the pain and anxiety of an unfaithful wife. She starts off with clenched eyes and teeth, and gradually retreats from anguished divorcee to ebullient young bride. Meanwhile, Stephens and West (one the offspring of Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens, the other of Timothy West and Prunella Scales) bring a fierce homoerotic charge to the goings-on. West, as the knowing cuckold, manages somehow to indicate seething fury and despair that only occasionally explodes from his clubbable exterior, while Stephens, as the lover, brings a leonine carnality to the drama.
Thirty years on, this short but devastating play about the pleasure and pain of treachery wears its age lightly. Yes, in the restaurant scene, the waiter serves melon with glacé cherries, but that's about as period as it gets. There is no moralising. The trouble with extramarital sex is not its inherent badness, or the guilt therein, but what happens after the affair is revealed.
An incriminating letter, and Robert's calm agony after discovering it, lie at the heart of the play. If Emma and Jerry had been messing about in the era of easily erased emails, they might never have been rumbled. Ignorance is bliss; mind you, if Pinter had not been rumbled himself, perhaps Betrayal would not have been written - and that would have been a great pity indeed.
Further info and booking details: http://www.donmarwarehouse.com
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