Betrayal 

            (20^TH CENTURY SOCIO-POLITICAL DRAMA) 

Title of play: Betrayal (1978)  

Date of first stage performance: First staged at the National Theatre in 1978 and later revived in the Almedia Theatre, London, in 1991. 

Date of film adaptation: First adapted into film in 1983 starring Jeremy Irons, for which Pinter wrote the screen play.

Author: Harold Pinter  

Author’s date & place of birth: Born 1930 in London.  

3                   significant details of author’s personal circumstances/times in which play was written:

·                     Pinter started out as an actor and his early experiences in theatre were useful when he turned his hand to writing for the theatre.  As his career progressed he also directed and wrote successful screenplays.

·                     Harold Pinter was born on October 10, 1930, into a Jewish family in the London Borough of Hackney, an only child who apparently conducted conversations with imaginary friends, which may or may not have been evidence of a future career in the theatre.

·                     The play was inspired Pinter's extramarital affair with BBC Television presenter Joan Bakewell, which occurred for seven years, from 1962 to 1969. The truth about the affair was not official, however, until the publication in 1996 of Michael Billington’s authorised biography The Life and Work of Harold Pinter which identified the Bakewell affair as the subject matter of Betrayal.

Structure of play: Acts/scenes, timescale:

The play is separated into nine scenes. It begins in 1977 goes backwards in time. This usually means that the audience knows more than the characters and you get instances where the characters misremember things. So the details become progressively more significant: all the inevitability of the future is felt. The first scene takes place after the affair has ended, in 1977; the final scene ends when the affair begins, in 1968; and, in between 1977 and 1968, scenes in two pivotal years (1977 and 1973) move forward chronologically.

Characterisation:

Main characters in play & very brief summary of

·                     Personality

·                     Role in play

·                     Key quotation (act, scene, line reference) The play has three characters plus one (as there is an unnamed waiter that appears in one of the scenes).    

Emma: is Robert’s wife. She is thirty-eight years old at the beginning of the play, which moves backward in time; Emma is dissatisfied in her marriage and ready to separate from her husband. She confesses to her husband that she’s having an affair, she announces the affair to her husband on holiday, declaring: “We’re lovers” (Sc. Five p. 84) Her husband 

Robert is forty year old publisher who publishes Emma’s lover’s work (Jerry) he reacts to the news of the affair casually replying: “Ah. Yes. I thought it must be something like that, something- along those lines.”  (Sc. Five p. 84) His calm and cool exterior to the news, that his wife is having an affair with his best friend, is unnerving. His best friend in question, 

Jerry is a forty-year-old writer. He is inherently a romantic, and it is this impulse that leads him to betray Robert, his best friend. In having an affair with Emma he is also betraying his own wife, Judith. We learn that it was Jerry who instigated the affair with Emma while a party was in progress at Robert’s house in 1968; he made a drunken pass at her. Jerry is the more romantic of the two men and the more naïve. He does not realize that Robert discovered the affair at least as early as 1973. Jerry only comes to understand the situation four years later, when the play begins.

1.                Dramaturgy & language: choose a two page extract and comment on the choice of language and dramatic effects: Act, Scene & page number:

(Scene five, p. 77-78)

In this scene Robert and Emma are in the hotel room in Venice talking about the book Jerry wants to publish. The sentences are short and sharp between the couple, they hardly say much but the silences, short replies and pauses speak louder than anything else.

Even though they are in a fairly domestic scene, in a hotel room, with Emma ‘on [the] bed reading’ and Robert: ‘at the window looking out’ it is clear that Pinter is trying to indicate that the distance between the couple spatially is also a metaphorical of the distance between the couple in their marriage. This distance and unfamiliarity is only heightened by the silence between the couple in the beginning of the scene.

It is clear from the opening scene that Robert is meant to ‘appear’ bothered about something, as the stage direction indicates that he ‘looking out the window’, however in true Pinter-like style his agitation is implied rather in language or lack of language; as he does not hear the question Emma is asking him.

When talking about the book Jerry has picked out Robert responds that he doesn’t like it because he believe the subject matter to be ‘betrayal’ (77).  This of course is the subject matter of the play itself and we as the audience also know this, since the play (has a backward trajectory) and opens with Jerry and Emma’s affair.

The cause for Robert’s distraction soon becomes clear as he gives his wife the letter from her lover and his best friend, Jerry. Although the casualness in the way Robert talks about the letter and hands it over could indicate indifference, Pinter’s sparse dialogue, allows room for any actor playing Robert-to make it seem that Robert is devastated by the betrayal of his wife and best friend. The beginning of the scene where, Robert is looking out the window can be played as a grief-stricken husband trying to compose himself or delaying the moment where he has to face up to his wife's betrayal.   

 Socio-political Themes: (with Act, Scene, page number)

1.                   Education: It is clear they are educated, the male characters are initiated in the literary world, Jerry is a writer, Robert is a publisher and Emma loves to read:  

Roberts says to Emma about Jerry: He used to write to me at one time. Long letters about Ford Maddox Ford. I used to write to him too…That was the time when we were both editors of poetry magazine. Him at Cambridge, me at Oxford. Did you know that? We were bright young men….” 

         (Sc. Five p. 82-3)

There is a kind of twin-like similarity between Robert and Jerry, with their parallel careers and families.

2.                Class/Race: The characters are presented as sophisticated, Oxbridge graduates, upper middle-class, well-to-do and physically attractive. Thus the characters accept betraying and being betrayed without too much fuss. Robert’s discovery that his wife’s is having an affair is taken in the stereotypical middle-class, ‘stiff-upper-lip’ manner:

Robert reply to Emma’s announcement that her and Jerry are lovers: “Ah. Yes. I thought it might be something like that, something along those lines.” (Sc. Five, p. 84)

The old religious and social restraints that gave rise to a sense of sin or guilt, and demanded punishment and atonement or condoned jealousy, outrage and revenge, have been replaced by a more urbane containment within the accepted norms of society. There is also a sense that passion and desire is firmly under control, and it is perfectly played out, with enough financial resources to help it along. In scene eight, the house Emma and Jerry have rented is presented as a domestic space where they play ‘husband and wife’ Jerry comes ‘home’ and Emma comes out of the kitchen : ‘wearing an apron’. (Sc. 8, p. 121)

3.                 Gender: Robert appears as a misogynist when he bursts out to Emma: “…a game of squash isn’t simply a game of squash, it’s rather more than that. You see first there’s the game. And then there’s the shower. And then there’s the pint. And then there’s lunch…You really don’t want a woman buying you lunch. You don’t actually want a woman within a mile of the place, any of the places, really. You don’t want her in the squash court, you don’t want her in the shower, or the pub, or the restaurant…”   (Sc. 4, p 68)

His outburst discloses a defensive attitude, an attempt to distance women so as to get rid of their sexually threatening presence. The game of squash also seems symbolic- Robert and Jerry have not played squash for a long time, it is implied, because Jerry has engaged instead in the betrayal game, and Robert’s rather fierce speech is meant to win him back as a partner in the male game. The same disjunction between affair-with-wife and squash-with-husband appears in Robert’s disclosure about Casey: “I believe he’s having an affair with my wife. We haven’t played squash for years, Casey and me. We used to have a damn good game.”

In the play, betrayal has lost its theological and moral edge. It has also lost its singular position within the double standard by which men and women are judged. The woman’s betrayal is not regarded as different from that of the two men. Emma exemplifies a woman living in a society in which the liberation of women has become a fait accompli.

In a way Emma appears a merely an extension to the men’s relationship, it seems that Robert is more betrayed by Emma and Jerry’s affair because it obstructs his friendship with Jerry: Robert says to Jerry: “…You don’t seem to understand that I don’t give a shit about any of this. It is true I’ve hit Emma once or twice. But that wasn’t to defend a principle. I wasn’t inspired to do it from any kind of moral standpoint. I just felt like giving her a good bashing. The old itch…you understand. (Sc. 2, p. 41).

4. Power: There is a clear power structure with power shifting dynamics from Jerry and Emma deceiving Robert about their affair and then to Emma and Robert deceiving Jerry, when Emma tells Robert about the affair.

In one scene there is clear indication of power-play; as Robert toys with Jerry by lying about going on the speedboat because he has guessed his wife has already told Jerry about them not working:

“Incredible day. I got up very early and- whoomp- right across the lagoon- to Trocello. Not a soul stirring.

Jerry: What’s the ‘whoomp?’

Robert: Speedboat.

Jerry: Ah. I thought-

Robert: What?”

(Sc. 7, p. 112).

Emma equally betrays Jerry by deceiving him about her husband’s knowledge about the affair. The conversation between her and her Jerry, after she has confessed appears like a game- with Emma holding all the cards and Jerry in the dark about everything. Emma tries to stay one step ahead of the game by gauging what Jerry knows while betraying both men:

“Emma: What do you mean by that?

Jerry : I don’t mean anything by it.

Emma : But what are you trying to say by saying that?

Jerry : Jesus. I’m not trying to say anything. I’ve said precisely what I wanted to say. (53).”

In this exchange Pinter directs our attention to the subtext- and the importance of what does not get said in arguments.

Critical comments/reviews – 3 quotations (author, publication, date, page no.)

The pivot is Robert…Superbly played by Samuel West, Robert initially seems a cold, calculating bastard viewing the fluctuations of adultery with sublime indifference. West gradually makes you see that the sardonic mask covers a broken heart: his discovery of Emma's affair shatters him; at his subsequent lunch with Jerry, where he ostentatiously sports a cravat, he conceals his wounds under tight-lipped smiles. […] Dervla Kirwan as Emma has the capacity to act thought: her great moment comes in a Venice hotel, where her realisation that Robert knows all is registered by nothing more than a faint lowering of her eyelids. […] Toby Stephens invests the adulterous Jerry with a paradoxical innocence. […] The virtue of Michell's production is it leaves no crevice unexplored; and it is much aided by William Dudley's design which, with its swirling white curtains, beautifully counterpoints the formal symmetry of Pinter's exquisitely crafted play.-June 2007 Donmar Warehouse London, Micheal Billington.


“Mr. Leveaux's production, on the other hand, often keeps us at a distance. Rob Howell, the set and costume designer, and David Weiner, the lighting designer, have given the production an opulent minimalism, with sparsely furnished but majestic rooms soaked in changing light. The evening is emotionally color coded, beginning with drab neutrals and moving toward the rich crimson dress in which Ms. Binoche ends the evening. The whole thing is as glacially glamorous as a Barney's window. It does tend to overwhelm the actors, however, who can look rather small and helpless in ways that, however symbolically appropriate, dilute psychological impact. And the concluding moment of each scene is usually drawn out to the point of diffusion. Nonetheless, there are images that stay with you from this production, developing like photographic negatives in the memory. Mr. Slattery's brusque demeanor and barking delivery could use more variety. But every so often there's a change in posture, a tilt of the head or a slight leaning away from the others that sears in its suggestion of repressed pain.” -Roundabout Theater Company Nov 2000,  BEN BRANTLEY, The New York Times.

“…watching Ian Rickson's beautifully lucid and perceptive revival, I became aware how much the play deals with the shifting balance of power in triangular relationships, and with the pain of loss. It is acknowledged that, by using reverse chronology to chart a seven-year-long affair, Pinter probes the corrosive nature of betrayal. Emma and Jerry, the married lovers, have palpably betrayed both their partners. Robert, Emma's husband, has also betrayed Jerry, his closest friend, by not revealing to him his discovery of the affair. And since Jerry and Robert, respectively an agent and publisher, treat literature as a commodity, they can both be said to have betrayed the idealism that in their youth led them to worship poetry, that of Yeats especially, for its aesthetic joy.”-June 2011, Micheal Billington, The Guardian.  

3 Other plays of the period (1970s) with very brief summary of plot

Mike Leigh’s “Abigail’s Party” (1977): Beverly Moss invites her new neighbours, Angela and Tony, who moved into the road just two weeks ago, over for drinks. She has also invited her neighbour Susan, divorced for three years, whose fifteen-year-old daughter Abigail is holding a party back in their house. Beverly's husband Laurence comes home late from work, just before the guests arrive. The gathering starts off in a stiff, insensitive, British-middle-class way as the virtual strangers tentatively gather, until Beverly and Laurence start sniping at each other. As Beverly serves more drinks and the alcohol takes effect, Beverly flirts more and more overtly with Tony, as Laurence sits impotently by. After a tirade about art, Laurence suffers a fatal heart attack. Within this simple framework, all of the obsessions, prejudices, fears and petty competitiveness of the protagonists are ruthlessly exposed.

It is a suburban situation comedy of manners, and a satire on the aspirations and tastes of the new middle class that emerged in Britain in the 1970s. The play developed in lengthy improvisations during which Mike Leigh explored the characters with the actors, but did not always reveal the incidents that would occur during the play.

Alan Ayckbourn’s “Absurd Person Singular” (1972): Divided into three acts, it documents the changing fortunes of three married couples. Each act takes place at a Christmas celebration at one of the couples' homes on successive Christmas Eves.

The play made its London début at the Criterion Theatre on 4 July 1972, transferring to the Vaudeville Theatre in July 1973, where it ran until 30 September 1974, completing a run of 973 performances.

Neil Simon’s “Chapter Two” (1977): is a semi-autobiographical play by Neil Simon. The plot focuses on George Schneider, a recently widowed writer who is introduced to soap opera actress Jennie Malone by his press agent brother Leo and her best friend Faye. Jennie's unhappy marriage to a football player has dissolved after six years, and she's uncertain if she's ready to start dating yet. Neither is George, whose memories of his first wife threaten to interfere with any effort to embrace a new romance.

Produced by Emanuel Azenberg and directed by Herbert Ross, the play had its world premiere at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles on October 7, 1977 with Judd Hirsch as George, Anita Gillette as Jennie, Cliff Gorman as Leo, and Ann Wedgeworth as Faye.