Saturday 17 <strong>March</strong> - Saturday 24 <strong>March</strong> 7.45pm excluding Sunday. Matinee Saturday 24 <strong>March</strong> 2.45pm Box Office: lewestheatre.org or 01273 3474826 £12/ Members £8 WRITTEN BY HAROLD PINTER DIRECTED BY PETER WELLBY BE TRAYAL
ON THIS MONTH: THEATRE Betrayal But who’s betraying who? Photo of Chris Parke (as Jerry) by Keith Gilbert To begin with, the working title for the play was ‘Unsolicited Manuscript’. And then, because a crucial scene is set in Venice, it became ‘Torcello’. Later it was ‘White Wedding’. But before that, it had been ‘Betrayal’, and, eventually, ‘Betrayal’ it became. Certainly there are many and varied types of betrayal going on in Harold Pinter’s play that the <strong>Lewes</strong> Little Theatre are presenting, forty years on from its opening night at the National Theatre on 15th November, 1978. Jerry, a literary agent, is married to Judith, a doctor. They have two children, Sam and Sarah. Jerry’s ‘best and oldest’ friend is Robert, a publisher, married to Emma. Again, two children, Charlotte and Ned. But oh dear, Emma and Jerry are having an affair. And by the time Robert finds out about it, it’s already been going on for five years. They’ve even set up a love nest in Kilburn. So, Emma is betraying Robert. Jerry is betraying Judith. The subject of a new novel that Emma is reading in Venice, represented by Jerry’s agency, turned down by Robert, may be betrayal. Robert believes so. Emma disagrees. But then, as Robert concedes, he may have been ‘thinking of the wrong book’. And we’re soon told that Robert has been betraying Emma, in serial infidelities, for donkey’s years. So, myriad betrayals, and yet it would seem that for Pinter the chief betrayal is Robert knowing about Jerry’s affair with his wife, and withholding that knowledge from Jerry. The play is told in reverse, so none of this account is really giving anything away. Apart from a rather dumb Italian waiter in one scene (not in Venice) the only three characters who appear are Robert, Emma and Jerry. When the play opened it was rather panned by the critics. Pinter’s excursion into North West London adultery was thought to be, how can one put this, a betrayal of the highly individual, edgy worlds that he had created in such plays as The Homecoming and No Man’s Land. But over the years the play’s standing in the Pinter canon has improved considerably. Even Michael Billington, one of its chief detractors when it opened, has recanted. And perhaps even Joan Bakewell has forgiven Pinter. It’s been well known for some time now that Betrayal was closely based on her years-long affair with the playwright when he was married to his first wife, the actress Vivien Merchant. Not something we perhaps needed to know. As someone observed at the time, it’s rather like finding out that Hedda Gabler is based on Valerie Singleton. A diary entry in Antonia Fraser’s book Must You Go?: My Life with Harold Pinter reads: ‘Harold told Joan about Betrayal in the Ladbroke Arms. She is “in a state of shock”. He always knew this was going to be quite a meeting. Me, idiotically: “Apart from that, did she like the play?” Harold: “That would be like asking Mrs Lincoln the same question.” I am a fool.’ David Jarman 39