Betrayal
At
Steppenwolf Theatre Company
(Steppenwolf Theatre Website)
1650 North Halsted Street
Chicago, Illinois 60614
312.335.1650

Martha Lavey: Artistic Director
David Hawkanson: Executive Director

By: Harold Pinter
(Harold Pinter Bio)

Featuring:
Ian Barford, Tracy Letts, Amy Morton

With:
Guy Barile, Shane Kenyon, Nettie Kraft, Pamela R. Maurer, Ben Snyder

Director: Rick Snyder
Assistant Director: Katie Schoeneck
Scenic Design: Todd Rosenthal
Costume Design: Nan Zabriskie
Lighting Design: Robert Christen
Sound Design: Andrew Hansen
Stage Manager: Laura Glenn
Assistant Stage Manager: Deb Stryer
Dialect Coach: Linda Gates
Public Relations: William Nedved
Public Relations Associate: Jay Geneske

Susan Weinrebe
February 3, 2007

What isn’t clear in Harold Pinter’s 1975 Nobel Prize winning play Betrayal, is who is really being disloyal to whom and with what “enemy,” for that is what the term “betrayal” means. This is a play of obfuscated meanings, with silences as important as what is said. The pauses in conversation become dialog in their own right, while the characters assess the response that will give them ascendancy in their ongoing struggle for power.

The time is 1977, as the lighted date above the brow of the stage informs us. From there we slide back through the years to the actual chronological beginning of Jerry and Emma’s affair, 1968. The sensation is rather like the image in old black and white movies where a character is shown being sucked into a vortex which symbolizes their struggle against external forces.

So, the facts, as we know them are: Jerry is Robert’s best friend and he is having an affair, has been having an affair with Robert’s wife, Emma, for seven years. Jerry is married and has a child. Robert and Emma have two children. Both families have gotten together socially as friends will do. Someone or some ones do not know about past, present, ongoing infidelities.

As the plot ravels itself backwards, details are filled in – to some extent. Like a detective story, which in a way Betrayal is, since the audience must assemble pieces of the relationship(s) puzzle, we are challenged to look for motives that answer: Why are these people behaving this way? The minimal cast of three, shows us a trio who are simultaneously protagonists and each other’s antagonists. Similar to figures in an M.C. Escher etching, they interlock to form a larger pattern and change one’s sense of perspective the longer one stares.

Known as a forum for ensemble stage work, Steppenwolf Theater pairs two of its more burnished actors with a new addition to the group. Tracy Letts as the coolly sardonic husband, Robert, is a hard nut to crack. He is tall and commanding and he uses his vantage to place himself on a level physically, as well as psychologically, above Emma and Jerry. Displaying no facial affect makes him an intimidating presence, especially when he casually comments that he’s bashed Emma several times in the past.

Amy Morton plays a cool and distant Emma. Her body language shows her sense of removal and sub rosa anger with her husband and lover as she barely brings her gaze to meet theirs. In a headmistressy way she corrects the inaccuracies of what they remember and seems emotionally levitated above them both.

Ian Barford, the newest ensemble member, plays Jerry as an exuberant puppy of a guy, albeit a tipsy one, in the reverse time order of the story. Emotionally eager, almost wriggling with the happiness of his affair and fantasy of a little “home” with Emma, it is chillingly perverse when he speaks to Robert, “…as your best man, your oldest friend.”

Even more disconcerting is Robert’s response, “You are, actually.”

Not a pretty piece of entertainment, Betrayal is something more substantial: thought and conversation-provoking theater.

Ensemble members Ian Barford and Amy Morton
Photo courtesy of Michael Brosilow

---

Ensemble members Tracy Letts and Amy Morton
Photo courtesy of Michael Brosilow

---

Ensemble members Ian Barford and Amy Morton
Photo courtesy of Michael Brosilow

---

Ensemble members Tracy Letts, Guy Barile, and Ian Barford
Photo courtesy of Michael Brosilow

---

For more information, contact Dr. Roberta E. Zlokower at zlokower@bestweb.net