‘BETRAYAL’: (left to right) Charlie Cox, Tom Hiddleston & Zawe Ashton. Photo: Marc Brenner

BETRAYAL
Written by Harold Pinter
Directed by Jamie Lloyd
Through December 8, 2019
Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre
242 West 45th Street
(212-239-6200),BetrayalOnBroadway.com

By David NouNou

I always found Betrayal to be Harold Pinter’s most accessible play. It has a lyrical flow and showcases a love triangle in the most mature manner without chronicling all the baggage that bogs down a ménage a trois. However, under Jamie Lloyd’s ultra-minimalistic staging, it has been stripped of any form or flow. It looks more like a first day rehearsal than a full performance. In this case minimalism is another way of saying pretentious.

Since the play spans a nine-year period and moves backward in time, when it originally opened in 1980, it had a specific time and was set in many places. The time now is irrelevant; it can be 1980 or 2019. However, there are many specific settings and on a threadbare stage, it is very difficult to decipher where you are in that moment. Since Mr. Pinter is a man of words and every word and sentence has to be listened to and digested, the audience has to now formulate where they are at any given time/year, thus robbing the play of the full attention it deserves.

As the curtain rises, Jerry (Charlie Cox) is having drinks “somewhere” with Emma (Zawe Ashton). It’s been two years since they have last seen each other and they are discussing their seven-year relationship. Jerry is a literary agent for writers, Emma runs an art gallery and is married to Robert (Tom Hiddleston), a book publisher. Robert and Jerry have been best friends since college, and Jerry was best man at Robert and Emma’s wedding. However, at this particular moment, various betrayals are being revealed. Emma is currently having an affair with Casey, an author, whose agent is Jerry and his publisher is Robert. Robert has been cheating on Emma for many years, and they are at the juncture of a divorce. Emma tells Robert about her seven-year relationship with Jerry. Betrayal runs through marriages, friendship and extra-curricular affairs, but all in a civilized manner without any mire to bring it down.

The next scene follows the previous one and is between Robert and Jerry. I’ve seen the play three times before, (so I know where it is being held) “in Robert’s apartment.” Robert and Jerry are casually conversing and it comes up that Robert didn’t find out about the affair the previous night but in actuality four years earlier in Venice. Betrayals in affairs and friendship keep mounting

The scenes keep moving backwards in time; the next is two years earlier at the flat where Jerry and Emma used to meet in the afternoons for their rendezvous but now are breaking up and giving it up. Moving back four years earlier to where Emma and Robert are in Venice where Robert first learned of Emma’s affair with Jerry. Time keeps going backwards to the time when a drunken Jerry surprises Emma in her bedroom and professes his love for her while a party is going on downstairs in her and Robert’s home.

A lot of movies and shows have since used this format of moving back in time. Betrayal was an original with its technique of reverse chronology. Affairs in general but especially extra-marital affairs have always been messy; how refreshing it was to see something handled so delicately and eloquently. Under this regime of “ultra-minimalism,” subtlety and nuances are being sacrificed under the guise of visionary directors. This means doing it on the cheap, especially for a play of this nature where time and places play such an important factor.

This is another movie-star vehicle and Tom Hiddleston making his Broadway debut as the cuckolded husband, Robert, is brilliant. His stage presence is palpable. His Robert is strong, venerable and multi-faceted. Even when he is off to one side of the stage and he is not in the scene, his presence and stature is felt. Mr. Hiddleston’s is probably the best Robert to date.

Charlie Cox as Jerry is effective but not commanding. Zawe Ashston as Emma seems more like she is modeling instead of acting in a Pinter play. Her staccato delivery of lines, which is good for a Pinter play, is overshadowed by her striking poses, and at times it appears she’s more into the poses than performing. Also, can anyone tell me why Emma is barefoot in every scene spanning over nine years? Couldn’t she afford a pair of shoes for one of those scenes? I guess this is yet another one of director’s minimalistic choices.

Like Sea Wall/A Life, another Hollywood star vehicle (which opened back in August), the latest Betrayal revival is another example of ultra-minimalism. This is the price we have to pay for seeing Tom Hiddleston or Jake Gyllenhaal. It seems minimalism must be the new theatrical experience for the rest of this season.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published September 9, 2019
Reviewed at September 8, 2019 press performance.

‘BETRAYAL’: (left to right) Zawe Ashton, Charlie Cox & Tom Hiddleston. Photo: Marc Brenner

‘BETRAYAL’: Tom Hiddleston. Photo: Marc Brenner.

‘BETRAYAL’: Charlie Cox. Photo: Marc Brenner

‘BETRAYAL’: Tom Hiddleston & Zawe Ashton. Photo: Marc Brenner

‘BETRAYAL’: The cast. Photo: Marc Brenner

‘BETRAYAL’: Tom Hiddleston. Photo: Marc Brenner

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‘OLD TIMES’: (left to right) Clive Owen, Eve Best & Kelly Reilly. Photo: Joan Marcus

OLD TIMES
Written by Harold Pinter
Directed by Douglas Hodge
Through November 29, 2015
American Airlines Theatre
227 West 42nd Street
(212-719-1300), www.RoundaboutTheatre.org

By David NouNou

“Gaze” and “lest” are two words that are bandied about in the current revival of Harold Pinter’s play Old Times. Perfectly normal words but not commonly used in today’s vernacular. Although the play and its setting feels totally today, the play actually debuted in 1971 and it reminisces back 20 years to 1951 when the English movie Odd Man Out was released, starring Robert Newton. You might ask yourself why I’m giving you all this information and my response to you would be we are dealing with Harold Pinter.

The premise is really quite simple. Deeley (Clive Owen) and his wife, Kate (Kelly Reilly), live by a seaside town in England, awaiting the arrival of Anna (Eve Best), who was Kate’s roommate 20 years ago in London. The ensuing 70 minutes are about who knew whom back then, who met whom and who was who. Who remembers what, ah memory, how awful the tricks it plays on you. After all, Pinter’s plots, like a jigsaw puzzle, appear simple on the surface but don’t fit together that easily, but if you care to scratch deeper and want to exert the effort, you’ll have to work your brains out to find a modicum of a plot that makes sense.

When one sees a Pinter play, one has to accept the fact that Pinter lived in an alternate universe. That universe is great for actors to play in, but hopefully real people don’t really have to live in it or speak its language. In Old Times, like a lot of Pinter plays, body language is as important as the spoken word. The eyes have a special language of their own. They play an important role here. The bodies, like the language, move in a staccato, rigid and arched manner, and when seemingly defeated, they crumble and appear lifeless. Each pair of eyes is both seductive and seducing. There is a constant thrust and parry to the proceedings.

Clive Owen, making his Broadway debut as the passive/aggressive husband, Deeley, is remarkable. Simultaneously you want to be ravaged by him and at the same time comfort and ease his anguish. Eve Best, as Anna, the predator/seducer, is beguiling, and any man or woman could fall under her spell. Kelly Reilly’s Kate is radiant as the dormant/manipulative wife/ex-roommate. Needless to say, the performances are in full throttle.

Although everything seems simplistic on the surface, it is a bumpy ride. It is up to the viewer to disseminate what is real and in the present, and what is a memory that may or may not have happened. Or is the past a memory game that the players feed off each other and embellish on? It’s not enough to listen to the dialogue; you have to constantly gaze at the shifting eyes and the staunch bodies lest you might miss a clue along the way.

‘OLD TIMES’: Kelly Reilly & Clive Owen. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘OLD TIMES’: Eve Best & Clive Owen. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘OLD TIMES’: (left to right) Kelly Reilly, Eve Best & Clive Owen. Photo: Joan Marcus

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published October 11, 2015
Reviewed at press performance on October 10, 2015

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PINTERLAND: (left to right) Sir Partick Stewart, Sir Ian McKellen, Billy Crudup, Shuler Henlsey. Photo: Joan Marcus

NO MAN’S LAND
Written by Harold Pinter
Directed by Sean Mathias
Cort Theatre
138 West 48th Street
(212) 239-6200; http://www.twoplaysinrep.com/

By David NouNou

To enter into Pinterland, one has to leave the comforts of the real world as one knows it, and be ready to enter another world that only makes sense in the mind of Harold Pinter. It’s a no man’s land, a netherworld that exists between reality and reminiscences. Nothing much happens, but somehow the characters’ lives do change. Through the volley of words, the characters ever so slowly morph into someone else. One’s attention can’t waiver even for an instant. Although all the words are common, everyday ones, we never know which set of words is going to trigger off the chain of events.

Set in Hampstead, a part of North London, Hirst (Patrick Stewart), an alcoholic, upper-class intellectual, meets Spooner (Ian McKellen), a down-on–his-luck poet who Hirst meets at a pub one evening and invites him over to his posh home. It appears that they may have met at Oxford; they are both in their sixties and reminisce about shared acquaintances and relationships. In this home also live Foster (Billy Crudup), an amiable “secretary”; and the thuggish Briggs (Shuler Hensley), a manservant. For Hirst, Foster and Briggs live in a comfortable, unchallenged world.  On this evening, Spooner seems to be the interloper who could change this comfy existence.

Let’s face it, for most Americans, Pinter is a tough pill to swallow. However, when you are in the presence of theatre magicians the likes of Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, it’s theatrical heaven. The chemistry between these two actors is palpable. These two men are such perfectionists; they can finish each other’s sentences. Not to take anything away from Billy Crudup and Shuler Hensley, for they are formidable actors in their own right, but the stage belongs to McKellen and Stewart. Mr. Crudup and Mr. Hensley are better served in the alternating twin rep in Waiting For Godot. Their talents are fully realized there.

Sean Mathais, the director, has managed to distill the humor and pathos from both plays. For Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot and Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land seem like a perfect combination to be done in repertory. They both require four actors and they complement each other; they both deal with the possibility of reality and the imaginary. Time is not important and reminiscences could be self delusion. While in Godot it feels like one is repeating the same day in purgatory, in No Man’s Land it feels like spending a night and day in a hellish dream that keeps pulling us into its vortex.

CHEERS: Sir Patrick Stewart toasts Sir Ian McKellen in ‘No Man’s Land.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published December 6, 2013
Reviewed at  press performance on December 4, 2013

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