WILLIAMSVILLE-The Rock River Players production of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal exposes multifaceted, complicated betrayals within and even beyond a love triangle of two men — friends — and a woman.
To add to the intrigue, the story is told pretty much in reverse chronological order.
Pinter (1930–2008) was an English playwright in the theater of the absurd camp. Absurdism is a style that, after World War II, turned theater to existentialist themes and challenges. Among them: What comes to pass when life seems to lack meaning or purpose as communications with close ones erode?
As described by Brittanica, the plays of Nobel Prize–winner Pinter are noted for their use of “understatement, small talk, reticence — and even silence — to convey the substance of a character’s thought, which often lies several layers beneath, and contradicts, his speech,” and for straddling the worlds of comedy and tragedy.
Pinter’s dialogue is what really intrigues — as fill-in-the-blanks and parse-the-pauses theater, it hinges on repetitions, irony, wit, and truncations.
It’s often what’s not spoken that matters most.
Under the direction of RRP’s Bahman Mahdavi, the Players production features Sean Fitzharris, Randy Lichtenwalner, and Addie Mahdavi, with Jess Guerrero as technical director and Cherie Moran as assistant director and designer.
With scene changes deftly navigated through lighting and enhanced by the music of Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays, the RRP’s delivery is crisp and oozing subtext, featuring honed performances and effective choices.
Addie Mahdavi, for instance, is the only actor who changes costumes throughout the nine-scene show, her wardrobe slowly evolving from virtually monochromatic to a much more colorful display in the last scene, which takes place seven years earlier.
The Commons spoke recently with Bahman Mahdavi.
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Annie Landenberger: It’s you who brings more contemporary, edgy — even daring — literature to the Rock River Players. You’ve done [David] Mamet twice, for instance. Tell me, what is it about Pinter that appeals to you now?
Bahman Mahdavi: Good question. I had my eye on this particular play for a very, very long time.
I saw it some 45 years ago, and I was really impressed by the depth of emotions that can be conveyed with so few words, where the characters say virtually nothing of importance and yet there’s so much going on.
Mamet’s characters talk all the time, they talk very crudely, and they’re loud. Here, characters are very British; they talk sparsely. They talk about the most mundane things: the kids, the family, the vacation. And yet, you know that right beneath that polished surface there are many volcanoes near eruption.
A.L.: It’s Pinter’s subtext that almost makes it more real, because that’s actually how we are.
B.M.: That is how we are. We have an argument with our significant other when more important is what’s unsaid. But again, there are some deep cultural differences there.
I wasn’t born in America, and something I’ve always appreciated, broadly speaking, is Americans’ way of being very direct. If something’s on somebody’s mind, they will tell you. I don’t have to play these games of guessing — this is something very fundamentally American.
In Pinter’s play, people don’t do that at all. Everything is very polished, very British, very restrained. And sometimes, a mere “Oh” is all they’ll say, and in the proper context, with the proper actors, it’s as eloquent as two pages of monologue.
A.L.: What about the play’s structure?
B.M.: It’s nine scenes where most of it goes backward in time. So it starts in 1974 and it finishes in 1968. Scenes one and two are in continuity, though.
A.L.: So how have your actors worked with the challenge of reverse chronology in terms of building the emotional arc?
B.M.: It’s been fascinating to watch them. I’m very lucky to be working with three really outstanding actors who read the play through and through, and from the very first rehearsal, they kind of got it.
They understood that, at any given time, what the characters know and what the audience knows — they’re not the same thing. On top of that, none of [the characters] really talks openly about what they really know. They’re playing games with each other all the time.
At the beginning of the play, the characters know the whole story; the audience knows nothing. At the end, it’s the other way around.
So [the actors have] had to plot their emotional development accordingly with this very restrained British way of expressing themselves.
A.L.: What do you think it is about our human need to deny or accept or move on? How could the four-year affair at the plot’s core go on without confrontation, without it being stopped?
B.M.: At first I was thinking, well, “It’s all very British.” But then again, not really. It’s universal in many ways. How can people let it happen? Each person in this story has their own motivation.
Jerry, for example — he’s probably the more simple, the easier one to understand. He’s the literary agent. He works with the publisher, Robert, and he’s having an affair with Robert’s wife. He has a wife and children, and he makes it very clear that he’s not going to leave his wife — not going to mess anything up. “We’re going to have this nice little affair, go about our business, and go home to dinner with our wives and husbands.”
Robert is more complicated. We never really know all about him. We know that there’s a lot of depth to him. He’s a person capable of a lot of things and does not show his real emotions at all.
Everything is completely under control. He finds out about the affair in scene five, but he kind of has a clue [earlier on], and it doesn’t affect him. At least not on the surface. And we find out that he’s been having his own affairs throughout the years.
The most complex character of the three, I think, is Emma, who, in having this affair, is longing for another life. She is the mother of two children, married to Robert, and she’s basically not a very happy person.
Her own lack of contentment is, in part, why she’s grabbing for affairs and affirmation. This is England in the late 1970s. She has an art gallery, but in the world of publishing, and with this close friendship between her husband and her lover, she feels definitely like a second-class citizen.
A.L.: I see. Interesting, because Addie seems to be a good, strong feminist, so I’m sure that there’s some struggling she’s had to do with that.
B.M.: Yeah. There’s one particular scene where the two gentlemen are having drinks and Emma joins them. And they’re talking about playing squash, and Emma says, “Can I come and watch? And I’ll take you out for lunch afterwards.” And Robert just tears her to shreds.
A.L.: Did Pinter’s own seven-year affair have an impact on the play?
B.M.: Yes, and that’s interesting to be that autobiographical in this realm.
A.L.: So the set is simple?
B.M.: Extremely simple, yes. Bare minimum. Jess has designed the lights for each scene so three quarters of the stage is lit; the edges are in the dark.
And one thing we all decided is that when there’s a scene with two characters, the third one is not off stage but sits on the side of the stage — not part of the scene, but still visible to the audience.
What I’ve actually worked toward is to bring everybody’s attention to the actors, who are capable of this incredible depth in their understanding and their performance of their roles.
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Betrayal runs Friday and Saturday, Aug. 28 and 29, at 7 p.m. and Sunday, Aug. 30, at 2:30 p.m. at Williamsville Hall, 35 Dover Rd., Williamsville. For tickets in advance, visit rockriverplayers.org.
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Editor’s note: Stories presented as interviews in this format are edited for clarity, readability, and space. Words not spoken by interview subjects appear in brackets.
Annie Landenberger is an arts writer and columnist for The Commons. She also is one half of the musical duo Bard Owl, with partner T. Breeze Verdant, and she is the founder of Rock River Players.
This Arts item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.