Betrayal

Harold Pinter

Theatre Royal Bath

Until October 31

By the time Pinter wrote Betrayal in the late 1970s he had long moved on from his less accessible early style of The Caretaker and The Birthday Party. There is none of the hidden menace of inarticulate and enigmatic characters.

It is a fairly straightforward deconstruction of an extra-marital affair. It starts at the end and works back to the beginning, which is somehow much more interesting than watching an affair develop with a certain inevitability.

The participants are all articulate and sophisticated people. There’s Robert (Joseph Millson) a publisher, his wife Emma (Nancy Carroll), a gallery owner, who has a five-year affair with Jerry (Edward Bennett), a literary agent and Robert’s best friend. The fourth cast member is Christopher Bianchi who, as a put-upon waiter in an Italian restaurant, is a match for a bad-tempered Robert.

The plot is deceptively simple, but Pinter is supremely skilful at gently peeling back the layers of emotion and posing the question of who knows what. Is the deceived husband aware of the affair, does the lover’s wife know? They are all friends. Their lives go on superficially undisturbed. But he hints at controlled turmoil under the surface.

It is romantic, funny and sad. It is based on a long affair Pinter had with the television presenter Joan Bakewell.

The performances are all immaculate, and absorbing enough to make this audience member, at least, forget she was wearing a face mask.

It runs for 80 minutes without an interval. An ideal production to encourage a return to the theatre.

Jo Bayne