Betrayal? Who, whom? This sizzling production of Pinter’s play about his seven-year affair with Joan Bakewell hits home as it reveals the moral ambivalence in the behaviour of each of the three characters in the story.
The piece famously runs backwards chronologically from 1977 to 1968, when at the end of the play, Pinter gives himself, in the person of Jerry, the most eloquent passage of dialogue when he love-bombs ‘Emma’, married to his best friend Robert.
Yet there is a sort of moral about-face at work here, in the insouciance of the self-satisfied Robert, long aware of his wife’s unfaithfulness, whereas Jerry, while betraying his unseen wife Judith, is allowed to feel betrayed because Emma has confessed all to her husband.
Relating events in advance exposes the lies and hypocrisy that lurk unspoken. Thus the last line in the play, Jerry’s to Robert as "your oldest friend, your best man", might be a mea culpa if spoken by anyone less arrogant than Pinter.
Gabriel Partington plays Jerry with a generosity of spirit, hiding a fragility of temperament—that owes more to the script than to the character of its author—behind a loud, blustery tone. The opening exchanges with Michaela Bedel’s sympathetic Emma, both staring fixedly ahead, puts on ice any romantic interludes that are to follow.
Director Rachel Baring maintains the tension throughout the 70 minutes without undue resort to Pinteresque pauses, a high point being the edgy, dissembling exchange of bonhomie between Jerry and Heath Ivey-Law as Robert—deliberately cast, one supposes, to resemble his rival—with Bedel maintaining a frozen expression for fear of exposing the sham goings-on.
Ella Firns's simple set, with lighting by Kris Chainey, effectively features just a black curtain which then opens onto a minimal stage with a sofa and little else by way of distraction, a calendar helpfully identifying the date of each regressing scene.