Review: Gloucester Stage Company's BETRAYAL is True to Pinter

Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” has some coolly cosmopolitan characters at its center. For a story about marital infidelity where disloyalty abounds, emotional display is eschewed in favor of measured dialogue, where every word is spoken with preciseness and every patented Pinter pause carries meaning.

Written by the Nobel Prize-winning English playwright in 1978 and produced that same year at London’s National Theatre, the play – being given a sterling production at Gloucester Stage Company through August 1 – is a classic and very much of its time. While the resonance of many contemporary plays comes from their social-justice themes, interpersonal relationships in themselves were the lifeblood of an earlier generation’s dramas like Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “A Delicate Balance,” Terrence McNally’s “Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune,” and A.R. Gurney comedies including “The Dining Room” and “The Cocktail Hour,” to name but a few.

Loosely based on Pinter's own affair with a BBC television anchor which lasted from 1962 to 1969, the plot of “Betrayal” weaves together different layers of betrayal relating to the seven- year affair between Emma (Liza Giangrande) and Jerry (Michael Underhill), who is a close friend of her husband, Robert (Tanner Efinger), and himself married to a woman named Judith, mentioned but unseen.

Told in reverse chronology – like the Stephen Sondheim musical “Merrily We Roll Along” – in nine scenes from 1977 back to 1968, the story opens in a London pub where Jerry and Emma are meeting two years after their breakup. Emma says that she and Robert are now breaking up, too, after a long and sleepless night during which Robert revealed he has had numerous affairs with other women and Emma told him in turn about her long-term affair with Jerry.

Mortified to learn that Emma has told his best friend of his betrayal, Jerry immediately makes tracks to Robert to gauge his reaction – but learns that Emma has betrayed him, too, having revealed their affair to Robert some four years earlier, which means that Robert had known for a long time that Jerry was hitting the sheets with his wife but had opted to deceive Jerry, not telling him he knew while continuing their friendship.

With Pinter, every word is well chosen. Since the play works its way backward through time and the outcome is known from the start, the disquieting experience of watching these supposed friends betray each other only intensifies with each unfolding scene. As in “The Birthday Party” and “The Homecoming,” Pinter's artfully minimalist dialogue is fully engrossing.

Director Shana Gozansky captures the specific rhythm of Pinter’s writing impressively, aided by her strong cast. Liza Giangrande – a 2026 Elliot Norton Award winner for GSC’s “The Glass Menagerie” – plays Emma, a part that couldn’t be more different from Laura Wingfield, with a controlled sophistication. Emma may be used by men, but she also uses them. Watching Giangrande bring her character’s every shading forward, it is evident that there are things to not only to cheer but also fear about Emma.

In his GSC debut, Underhill, who was turning heads as Brick in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” just last month at the Gamm Theatre in Warwick, R.I., is well cast as the goodlooking, sometimes comedic Jerry, who takes out his anger on his two-timing mistress and his friend. Efinger, also in his GSC debut, is terrific in the less showy but very impactful role of Robert – it is the predatory Robert, after all, who is razor sharp in his punishment of Emma and Jerry. Jeremy Beazlie also provides some much-needed moments for exhalation in the walk-on role of the waiter.

Jeffrey Petersen’s spare set design makes the most of 1960s mod furniture including a tulip table, steel wire chairs, and a sleek bar. The stage, with a plush, red-carpeted floor, features a wall of freestanding panels, mirrored and otherwise, that allow backstage glimpses of the actors changing into Costume Designer Nia Safarr Banks’s array of period outfits. Also helping to set the tone for the one-act play are Julian Crocomo’s sound design and composition, which capture its various moods and time periods.

Reader Reviews

To post a comment, you must register and login.

Need more Boston Theatre News in your life?
Sign up for all the news on the Summer season, discounts & more...