While Betrayal starring Nancy Carroll and Edward Bennett doesn’t have the emotional punch of last year’s revival, it is directed with admirable clarity
Betrayal
Theatre Royal Bath Until Saturday, 1hr 15mins
Bath’s exquisite Regency theatre is back in business. Hooray! This ‘welcome back’ season kicks off with an absorbing production of Harold Pinter’s least socially distant play about bed-hopping among the North London literati.
It is based on the author’s affair with TV presenter Joan Bakewell. One rather wishes Dame Joan had bashed Pinter over the head with an Aga pan after reading this play – itself an act of appalling betrayal.
But she didn’t; I suspect because she saw that this really is a work of art, superbly unlocking the emotional mechanics of deceit with such insight, irony and poignancy.
The evening is held together by a radiant performance from Nancy Carroll, a warm, alluring Emma. Edward Bennett (above, with Carroll) is her lover, in desert boots, rather boyish
It goes backwards in time, starting in 1977, from the end of an affair to the beginning – a trick that works like a dream. The characters include Jerry, a literary agent who is having an affair with Emma, the wife of his best friend from undergraduate days, a publisher called Robert.
In essence, it’s about the destruction of two male friends who both end up annihilated by the deception. Emma, you feel, is the only survivor.
What a tangled web this weaves. The love-nest scenes and the alibis brought to my mind Queen Alexandra’s remark at the graveside of her philandering husband, Edward VII. ‘Now at least I know where he is.’
The evening is held together by a radiant performance from Nancy Carroll, a warm, alluring Emma. Edward Bennett is her lover, in desert boots, rather boyish.
My one reservation is the greasy-haired Joseph Millson as Robert, who looks more like a hitman than a publisher. Yet his physical menace pays dividends in the seemingly casual cross-questioning of his wife – a real pin-dropper – in a Venice hotel room.
While this doesn’t have the emotional punch of last year’s starry revival with Tom Hiddleston, it is directed with admirable clarity and pace by Jonathan Church to taut, thriller-like music.
A fascinating play, then, and a good start to Bath’s brave initiative.