Review: BETRAYAL at Goodman Theatre

I must confess: I never really “got” the work of Harold Pinter. At least initially. My first exposure to him was a collection of his more abstract one acts performed in a warehouse in downtown New Orleans. What did all these reflections on memory, existence, and the ephemerality of existence mean to a 19-year-old who had never felt more alive? But, however many years later, I found myself struck by a single line near the end of his 1978 play BETRAYAL, now receiving a much-anticipated and star-studded revival at The Goodman Theatre. It’s a testament to Pinter’s genius that a play can affect adult audiences of all ages after four decades. But it’s a testament to the mastery of great artists who can make this relevance so apparent. Under the direction of artistic director Susan V. Booth and bolstered by actors at the heights of their craft, the Goodman’s BETRAYAL provides audiences with a sincere and sympathetic take on a modern classic. The production has already received an extension through March 30.

Told in reverse chronological order, BETRAYAL traces an extramarital affair from its bittersweet ending to its unexpected commencement nine years earlier. At the play’s opening, Emma (Helen Hunt) meets with her former lover Jerry (Robert Sean Leonard) to catch up two years after their affair ended. Emma announces that she has just told her husband Robert (Ian Barford) about the affair and now her marriage is likely at its end. But as the play progresses—and regresses—through time, audiences learn that these relational dynamics aren’t quite what they seem, and the characters may be deceiving themselves just as frequently as they deceive one another.

Pinter’s plays present challenges for actors, directors, and designers alike. His scripts favor minimalism in dialogue, using short words and phrases to suggest the characters’ emotional depths. His plays famously include long pauses and silences that can feel interminable to audiences if not handled with care. Thankfully, Booth rises to Pinter’s challenge with confidence and care. The pauses remain, and there are plenty of them, but Booth and her actors have taken care to consider what remains unspoken in those moments. Audiences can well imagine what it is that the characters are just on the verge of saying, even if these words lie hidden beneath furrowed brows and lowered glances. Booth treats the expanse of the stage in much the same way, using the distance between actors to suggest as much meaning as the pauses in the action do. There are moments when Emma and Robert never seem closer than when they are across their house from one another. Conversely, there are times when Emma and Jerry never seem farther apart than when they are cradled in each other’s arms.

As has been written about elsewhere, Booth made the unconventional decision to cast actors a generation older than Pinter originally imagined. The daring creative choice pays off in unexpected ways. Whereas marital infidelity in younger couples might be the result of boredom or regretting decisions made when one was too young to imagine their consequences, the characters’ more advanced ages here suggest a deeper unhappiness, as though they are grappling with the sense that life has passed them by and any lasting changes can no longer meaningfully take place.

Nowhere is this emotional and psychological complexity more evident than in Helen Hunt’s portrayal of Emma. Far from being a flighty wife uncertain of her own desires, Hunt projects confidence and certainty, her voice steady and sharp even as she dares to stand up for herself and risk the stability of her household. This is an Emma who is choosing her future without doubt or regret, a woman who stands at the dramatic center of a play that tries to pit her between two men. Which is not to suggest that Hunt comes across as cold or unfeeling. Hunt makes it clear that Emma’s choices cause great pain to herself as she seeks to live a more authentic, fulfilling life—whatever that may entail.

Her assurance is complemented well by the performances of her costars. In another interesting twist, it is Jerry who is the most openly emotional of all the characters, and Leonard handles the role with great pathos without ever becoming pathetic. Leonard especially proves himself masterful in finding the dramatic weight of Pinter’s prose. Late in the play, when Emma asks Jerry if he has ever considered changing his life, he replies that it is “Impossible.” With this single word, Leonard conveys not only the depths of Jerry’s hopelessness and the doubt central to Pinter’s play, but also a sentiment universal among all of us. Can anyone ever really change their lives? At what point in our lives does the opportunity for change pass us by? At what point do such changes become “impossible”?

Perhaps on the opposite end of this existential spectrum, Barford’s Robert actively despises such changes, his proverbial British stiff upper lip dripping with venom when speaking of modern literature or his wife’s attempts as emotional honesty. But Barford is too talented of a performer to simply play the villain. By understating Robert’s quiet attempts at control, Barford becomes surprisingly sympathetic when his walls come down and he gives voice to the indignation that has been building over the years.

Rounding out the cast is Nico Grelli as a waiter at a restaurant that Robert and Jerry frequent during workdays. Grelli finds levity and humor in a role that otherwise seems to only serve as jumping off point for Robert’s reflections on fathers, sons, and the question of posterity.

BETRAYAL can be as daunting a play for audiences as it is for its cast and director. Some may wonder how easily they’ll be able to follow a play taking place in reverse, but Booth’s design team puts such anxieties to rest rather quickly. Rasean Davonté Johnson’s projections alert viewers to the exact timing of each scene, and most changes in the years are intercut with curious home video montages of children and adults at play. Neil Patel’s set consists of sliding, vaguely translucent walls that glide across the stage to suggest movement from one home to another, from the office to the pub. Looming over all this action though, just discernible in the background, Patel places a bed against the back walls that haunts all the other scenes, suggesting the ways in which infidelity and betrayal lie behind all the characters’ interactions and developments. And perhaps lie behind all our lives to some extent as well.

Ultimately, the Goodman’s BETRAYAL never betrays audiences’ undoubtedly high expectations. Booth and her team have given audiences a play as blistering as a Chicago winter that nevertheless finds comfort in a shared human condition.

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