Betrayal review – a haunting reminder of deception's impact

Harold Pinter Theatre, LondonTom Hiddleston is the big draw and is superb in conveying unhealed emotional woundsAfter a brilliant season of Pinter’s short plays we now get his full-length study of the complex mathematics of betrayal. But, while Tom Hiddleston is the big draw and gives a fine performance, what is striking is the spartan purity of Jamie Lloyd’s production. Of the many versions of the play I’ve seen over the past 40 years this one goes furthest in stripping the action of circumstantial detail.Pinter famously reverses chronology so that we start with the bitter-sweet aftertaste of an affair and then backtrack in time to its beginnings. But Lloyd never lets us forget that there are three sides to an emotional triangle and that the absent partner is always there in the mind. So, as Emma and Jerry meet for a drink long after their relationship is over, we are aware of the gaunt, unforgiving presence of Hiddleston as Emma’s husband, Robert, in the background. In the Venetian scene where Robert first learns of Emma’s affair, Charlie Cox’s Jerry is both physically and spiritually present. And when the two men later have a deceptively casual lunch at a London restaurant, Zawe Ashton’s Emma sits in the shadows pensively munching an apple. Continue reading…
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