Harold Pinter’s Betrayal has returned to Broadway less than six years after the play’s last starry, smashingly successful visit. Don’t let that dissuade you: The new production at the Jacobs is equally excellent, equally exciting, and likely to be a premium-ticket sellout for the duration of its 17-week engagement. This thanks to incisive performances from Tom Hiddleston, Charlie Cox, and Zawe Ashton, plus an intriguing and often surprising production from director Jamie Lloyd.
Hiddleston—a major international star thanks to appearances in The Hollow Crown and Thor, along with other Marvel films—seems to be the magnet for excited ticketbuyers, which is all to the good. But he is also an Olivier-winning stage actor, and his performance here—always lurking, usually brooding, and ever-cautiously shielding the truth (or is he?)—enhances the power of Pinter’s play. Cox, another film superhero (Daredevil) with stage experience (Nick Payne’s Incognito, at MTC in 2016), does similarly well. The pair are well matched, demonstrating a long-time camaraderie masking the secrets and poison-tipped betrayals between them.
The surprise of the evening is Ashton, who was previously unknown to this reviewer (despite numerous U.K. stage and screen credits). She offers an exceptional performance, her Emma dominating the play in a manner which the three actresses I’ve seen in prior productions have not. One of Lloyd’s several intriguing touches has Ashton slinking along the rear wall of the set like a lynx surveying prey, and you literally can’t take your eyes off her.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★★★ review here.]
If I seem hesitant to reveal Lloyd’s handiwork, it is only to preserve his several surprises for future playgoers. (Pinter’s script is spare, with few stage directions to impede directors.) He has placed his cast on an almost bare stage backed by a massive wall that stretches the entire width of the stage from wing to wing, as opposed to the bedroom/restaurant/kitchen scenery typically used in productions of the play. The design comes from Soutra Gilmour, a busy U.K. designer who picked up a Tony nomination for her one previous local visit with Lloyd’s 2012 Cyrano de Bergerac at the Roundabout.
Betrayal seems to have grown more engrossing since its premiere. For this viewer, at least, the original Broadway production in 1980—starring Raul Julia, Blythe Danner, and Roy Scheider, with director Peter Hall and designer John Bury recreating their 1978 Royal National Theatre production—was altogether underwhelming and somewhat sleepy. The play, traveling nine years in time (mostly backward), reveals a triangular relationship among a successful publisher (Hiddleston), his gallery-owning wife (Ashton), and his best friend/her seven-year lover (Cox). The plot was taken from life. The woman in question was TV news journalist Joan Bakewell, memorably dubbed “the thinking man’s crumpet” by a British humorist; her then-husband, a BBC producer/director; and the playwright with whom she had a long affair. Pinter, that is. Bakewell later wrote her own radio play about her seven-year affair with Pinter, Keeping in Touch.
When Betrayal finally reappeared in New York in 2000—with Liev Schreiber, Juliette Binoche, and John Slattery, under the direction of David Leveaux—it was something of a revelation. Pinter’s “Pinteresque” drama was now revealed to be a web of betrayals, secrets, and confessions (and false confessions) that held you riveted. I wondered at the time whether this was perhaps influenced by the fact that in 1980 I was watching three “old” characters dealing with the subject, while in 2000 I myself was 20 years older. This seems not to be the case; the play’s reputation has grown considerably since those first early productions, to the point that it can be successfully revived again and again in both London and New York with increasing audience attention and enthusiasm.
Mike Nichols’ 2013 production, led by Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, and Rafe Spall, pointed up the web of infidelities—both marital and intra-personal—underpinning the play. These are further accentuated in director Lloyd’s present production, which originated in March as the capstone of his unprecedented Pinter at the Pinter season, which revived some 30 plays (including numerous one-acts) at the Harold Pinter Theatre.
When first encountered, Betrayal did not by any means look like a future classic. The present production, thanks to Lloyd and his acting company, demonstrates that after 40 years, Pinter’s examination of truth and deception holds up exceedingly well.
Betrayal opened September 5, 2019, at Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre and runs through December 8. Tickets and information: betrayalonbroadway.com
