Kyle Smith

Betrayal is best when played as a teasing, slightly sinister comedy, as it was in a 2000 Broadway production in which then little-known John Slattery played Robert and made the most of it, stealing the show from his co-stars Juliette Binoche and Liev Schreiber. Hiddleston is a fine actor and gets some laughs out of the part as Robert toys with the other two, but he spends much of the play seeming forlorn where Slattery was impish, which is why this staging drags a bit even at an abbreviated 90 minutes. Cox, meanwhile, is more than adequate as the duplicitous friend, but Emma Ashton merely comes across as sweet and slightly passive. She hardly seems worth anyone's trouble, and I'm not sure the play does either.