Couverture de Review: “Betrayal” at Marin Theatre

Review: “Betrayal” at Marin Theatre

Review: “Betrayal” at Marin Theatre

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Photo: David Allen KPFA Theatre Critic Richard Wolinsky reviews “Betrayal” by Harold Pinter, directed by Carey Perloff, at Marin Theatre through November 15, 2026. TEXT OF REVIEW Simple language. Complex emotions. The space between words. The changing role of memory in our lives. These play a role in the works of playwright Harold Pinter, and they are all at the center of his play Betrayal, now in a production directed by Carey Perloff at Marin Theatre through November 15th Jerry, a literary agent, and Robert, a publisher, had been best friends for several years when Jerry starts a clandestine affair with Robert’s wife, Emma. But the play opens at the other end, two years after the affair ended, nine years after the relationship began. (Pinter started with an image) Carey Perloff, director of this production. (The image is a man and a woman at a pub, she has a glass of wine, he has a beer, They’re looking at each other with sort of infinite sadness. And there’s silence. And he had that image and he thought, who is this couple, and how do I pursue what happens to them. And that’s how he wrote the play, which goes backwards.) The play, then, is the way the affair ran its course, starting at the end. The betrayal at the heart of the play is not merely Jerry’s of Robert, but how each one of the triad betrayed the other members of the threesome. (The English use language in an opposite way to how we use language. So Americans tend to believe in confession and therapy, and we use language to reveal. And the British tend toward gross generalization but tend to use language as as a smokescreen to protect and to deflect and to hide what they’re feeling. It’s a very different thing) Betrayal is often played as primarily about the two men, and Emma can become a cipher, a stand-in for a the ball in Robert and Jerry’s metaphorical squash game, but here Liz Sklar’s Emma has her own agency, turning this into a three-way sports match. She’s rarely been better, and she’s equalled by Charlie Semine as Robert and Tasso Feldman as the clueless Jerry. (The landscape is very competitive, it’s predator and prey, it’s like stepping into a boxing ring. It really is a kind of music, and the pauses are the places where danger comes or where silence happens and the characters have to recalibrate.) Betrayal is often very, very funny. In their self-dealing and lies, these three characters are, ultimately, very serious players inside a farce of their own creation. (The really interesting thing about the play is who knows and who knows who knows what when. You really do have to think in this very complicated way in every scene. who knows what when and who is lying to whom and what is the real duplicity and one of the heartbreaking things about Betrayal is how much it’s about self-betrayal.) Betrayal by Harold Pinter, directed by Carey Perloff, plays at Marin Theatre through November 15th. For more information you can go to marintheatre.org. I’m Richard Wolinsky on Bay Area theatre for KPFA. The post Review: “Betrayal” at Marin Theatre appeared first on KPFA.
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