By Jonathan Jones
Friday, July 15, 2011
What a script! My exposure to Harold Pinter has been very limited (I wasn't a theatre major, after all), but I am always open to seminal works by the great masters, particularly of modern drama. Given that Ian Rickson's current hit Jerusalem was a bit lost on me (review to come), this was a pleasant departure. Spare and even keeled, Betrayal was an empty pallete, from which the actors were able to ruminate on the text and present heartbreak, joy, anguish, bitterness, and honesty. Kristin Scott Thomas draws the audience in, her silence saying more than her words at times. We laugh with her, and were she a crier, we might cry too, but rather, we enjoy the silence and internalize what goes unsaid. Ben Miles and Douglas Henshall deliver as the two men in her life; for Miles, his strength and jagged-edged emotion cuts to the core. He is cold and vindictive; calculating and sinister. Mr. Henshall is lovable and seductive--every bit the man you could not resist. A triumph of theatre, if ever there was one.
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