It goes without saying that if former American Conservatory Theater Artistic Director Carey Perloff (now a freelance director) is at the helm of a play by Harold Pinter—or Tom Stoppard, or countless other playwrights—every inch of the script will be carefully mined for subtext. The timing of every line, of every pause, will be precise. Multiple implications, subtle as they may be, will register. Every gesture will be potent.
Such is the case, of course, with the current Marin Theatre production of Pinter’s 1978 “Betrayal.”
In Scenes 1 through 9 in this three-character drama, the late British playwright pokes into the nooks and crannies of a seven-year, illicit affair—for the most part, backwards.
Scene 1 is set in 1977 in a pub, when lovers Emma (Liz Sklar) and Jerry (Tasso Feldman), dispirited, rehash the demise of their affair. Finally, in Scene 9, set in 1968, a drunken, besotted (and married) Jerry first seduces Emma, the wife of his best friend Robert (Charlie Semine) at Emma and Robert’s home.
We in the audience are privy to things that the characters do not know. (In an interview in Broadway World, Perloff points out that “along the way, we . . . feel that we’re betraying the characters” because we know more than they do—yet in a way, she says, at the end, the characters betray the audience.
In every moment of the play, which is a tight composite of short scenes, something complicated is indeed going on, all the time, including during the famous Pinter pauses.
All three are haunted by memories, but at times they remember the same incident differently: That day years ago when Jerry tossed Emma and Robert’s little daughter joyfully into the air in the kitchen, whose kitchen was it? (Faint line drawings of the moment are reflected in translucent windows on designer Yuki Izumihara’s carefully structured, three-section set.)
All three must deal with guilt, subterfuge, and passion. All three actors, under Perloff’s ever-so-precise direction, capture every nuance of Pinter’s carefully structured script.
Feldman’s seemingly slightly withdrawn Jerry, a literary agent, and Semine’s more aggressive Robert, a publisher, have a longtime friendship in which they argue, especially about literature. The ways in which Jerry hides his duplicity from Robert, and the ways that Robert manipulates his friend, are varied and subtle. Along the way, it’s a guessing game for audiences to trace just when Robert knew what, and the actors handle nerve-rackingly intense scenes with the greatest finesse.
As Emma, Sklar moves from one almost-hidden emotion to the next with grace. You can see the anxiety, or the surprise, or the joy, reflected in her eyes, in the slightest movement of her mouth, in her shifting stance, the way she moves her body: flouncing across the stage in high heels, lounging on the bed, succumbing to the lure of both men. All three know how to plumb the depth of their characters’ ever-changing emotions: what to suppress, what to reveal.
Even if you don’t particularly care about how naughty Jerry and Emma have been, what’s so fascinating are these tiny indicators of what is going on inside the heads of all three, as examined in precise detail by this terrific team.
Marin Theatre’s “Betrayal’ continues through Nov. 15 at 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley. Tickets are $45 to $116 at marintheatre.org. https://www.marintheatre.org/.