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Betrayal

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman

Noho Arts Center

Through May 17

Harold Pinter’s Betrayal may revolve around an adulterous triangle, but the tone and language of the play are as restrained as understated and as famously precise as anything else in his poetically taut compendium of work.

Any undergrad in liberal arts can tell you that, so why state the obvious?  Well, because first time director Aaron Craig has made the unconventional choice to integrate contemporary American ballads – performed by a vocalist, a bass player and a keyboard guy – into his staging of Pinter’s work.

I’d like to be able to say it’s an interesting way to go, but I can’t.  Not only does this music – which is performed between every scene – serve up too jarring a contrast to the playwright’s meticulous dialogue, but it also fails to reflect what the play is fundamentally about: broken promises, not broken hearts. Sometimes they are the same.  In this case, they aren’t.

The story (in case your undergrad years are too far behind you and/or you’ve just forgotten), unfolds in reverse over a 9 year period, and tracks an affair, from its end back to its beginning, between two people who are married to others: Emma (Elizabeth Kimball) who is married to Robert (Brian Graves), and Jerry (Greg Crooks), Robert’s best friend.

The betrayals among them aren’t limited to the lovers’ deception of Robert and Jerry’s wife Judith (whom we never meet); they also involve some philandering on Robert’s part, along with his decision not to disclose to Jerry that he knows he’s screwing his wife.

For it turns out that Robert has known for quite some time what’s been going on, while outwardly pretending ignorance.  Discovering this, Jerry is appalled.  Though he’s lied to Robert all these years, he’s wounded to the core that his friend has also been concealing truths from him.  An argument can be made, and has been, that, for the men, the fracturing of their friendship is far more significant than anything they feel about Emma. And for all three, one might say that the degree of their self-deception far exceeds any duplicity leveled against another.

Of the three leads Kimball performs best, successfully projecting a torn and anxious woman unhappy with her life. A one-note Graves is effectively menacing as the suspicious Robert, the problem being that he is equally angry and suspicious in every scene.  As directed by Craig, we know all along that he knows.  The essence of a successful rendering of this play is that we, along with the characters, are never exactly sure who knows what.

As Jerry, Crooks seems not to have found his footing yet.  If ever there were any chemistry with Kimball’s Emma, it doesn’t show.

Perhaps if the production made more sense of the play’s subtleties, the workshop set of square black boxes moved about, and the men’s ill-matched and  tasteless clothes, would be more forgivable.

Noho Arts Center, 11136 Magnolia Blvd., N.Hlywd.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; through May 17. https://www.betrayalnoho.co/#betrayal or www.plays411.com/betrayal