Back in the BEFORE TIMES when people went places I saw Betrayal with Tom Hiddleston. Here are my thoughts.
The best part of the recent production of Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” is the excellent cast. Besides the three main leads there are only too other actors, a darling little girl with no lines and a hilarious waiter with just a few lines. Zawe Ashton plays Emma as a brittle woman throwing away everything she wants with both hands. Charlie Cox brings the sweet bashfulness that was charming in Marvel’s Daredevil for Netflix to his portrayal of best friend, Jerry. Tom Hiddleston as the betrayed husband, Robert tempers his barred teeth smiles and snarling grins with an affableness that has characterized all of his performances. The direction highlights the key conceit of the play which is the non linear time frame for which Pinter is known. The revolving floor and moving set walls create a sense of time flowing by as well as claustrophobia and missed opportunities. There’s nothing technically wrong here but it feels like the requisite boxes are being ticked off. Dramatic irony-check, long pauses-check, repressed feelings-check, avant garde minimalist staging-check.
with each check it became more clear to me that this play would have been better served as an acting class exercise. I’m sure it was very challenging to direct and to play but there was no joy in it. I’m not a person who needs a happy ending; I greatly enjoyed a performance of “The Phantom of the Opera” at Her Majesty’s Theater last year. But this. This was all “All I Ask of You” reprise and no “Phantom of the Opera” overture.
Although he (Pinter) hangs a lantern on the proliferance of white male authors who behave terribly writing stories about white male protagonists who behave terribly this just seems like more of the same. This was an hour and 15 minutes of navel gazing about infidelity with no insight into character. Right under the surface of this play is the story I would like to have seen. What made Emma engage in an affair with her husband’s best friend? This angle is not explored at all so that we could see the hurt that the affair caused these two male best friends. While this may have been a fresh take in 1978, in the present a love triangle that is more about the two men than the woman reads like something written in 1978. The director attempts to correct this by having all three actors stay on stage at all times, but in the end one is left wondering at the characters motivations.
Commentaires