Arts :: Theater
The evolution of love by Jules Becker
Contributing writerWednesday May 26, 2010 The subtleties of human relationships are explored anew in 1978’s "Betrayal."
Harold Pinter focused on trios of characters and the evolving relationships between them in some of his major plays. Think of the great early work "The Caretaker," in which a shabby and bigoted stranger alternately confronts and interacts with two very different brothers. "Betrayal," another major if somewhat less powerful work, looks in reverse at the affair of a very fetching wife and the best friend of her husband and the changing dynamics of relationships. Now, at the Boston Center for the Arts’ Calderwood Pavilion, Another Country Productions and Factory Theatre are approaching the 1978 drama in a fresh way.
The revival’s director and sound designer Gail Phaneuf, a Boston-based playwright (the musicals "The Love Note" and "Monsters" among others) recently spoke about the play and the use of the Meisner technique of acting in her staging. Pinter’s unique drama endeavors to understand how the relationships between husband Robert, wife Emma, and her lover Jerry developed and how they reached their current reality. Eschewing conventional stagecraft, Pinter reversed scene order so that the play begins at its spring 1977 end and concludes with its 1968 beginning. Some audience members may not realize how much more powerfully the play can work with this order until they have seen it performed.
As the scenes move from 1977 with Emma and Jerry essentially past their infidelity to 1968 and Jerry’s confession that Emma dazzled him, the subtleties of their affair become more vivid. Pinter may not be judging his characters but he is saying that their relationships are rich with ambivalence. Yet he leaves no doubt that Robert, Emma, and Jerry need to all be an important part of each other’s lives. The greatest betrayal might be a decision by all three to respectively go it alone.
Director Gail Phaneuf has approached the complexities of their relationships through the Meisner technique. The late great acting teacher gave top priority to experiencing real life on stage and reacting immediately to fellow actors’ words and actions. "All of the three [Lyralen Kaye, Wasyne Fritsche, and Robert Kropf] had Meisner training," Phaneuf noted. "We felt our way through a lot of it before we set the blocking." In fact, she explained, "We did the play in chronological order in rehearsal." She felt that a play set up that way "seemed more about the relationships of the men." Granted, the play does make the case that Robert may have a man-crush for Jerry. "He’s struggling with his feelings for Jerry," Phaneuf offered. Robert may be latently bi-sexual. Even bromance-friendly Jerry seems to speak with great emotion at times about his best friend.
Still, the play does obviously have a lot to say about pivotal Emma as well. Ultimately, she said, "I feel like it is a love story. I think we really did try to explore the love between all three." Phaneuf found that "Usually [the interaction of Robert and Jerry is] played as very competitive." She felt that Robert’s reaction in particular was telling. "Why would he not stop [the relationship between Emma and Jerry] and not say anything?" Clearly, she maintained, Robert wanted to preserve his own deep friendship by not severing ties in any way. "I feel like it is a love story [in diverse ways]," she concluded. Meisner’s technique, she contended, enables Kaye, Fristche, and Kropf to perform that love story "in front of an audience without audience awareness."
Under the microscope: "Betrayal"
For Jean Paul Sartre, "hell is others," and three people are an impossible closed tribunal with "no exit." For Harold Pinter, at least in the intriguing drama "Betrayal," such a trio is alternately blessed and cursed. If love is in the eye of the beholder, then husband Robert, wife Emma, and her lover Jerry seem to exist in a kind of gallery of perspectives about love and friendship. In the affecting Another Country Productions and Factory Theatre revival at the Boston Center for the Arts, director Gail Phaneuf has fittingly set the play’s evolving relationships in a sharp-looking gallery that also works as a multi-faceted metaphor.
There are moments when the tensions between the characters could be evoked with darker brush strokes, but the play’s dynamics are well detailed. Lyralen Kaye catches the spirit with which Emma dazzles Jerry and the warmth that she shares with Robert. Robert Kropf has Jerry’s appealing boyishness with Emma and the vitality that he brings to discussions with publisher Robert about current writers and books. Wayne Fritsche brings good balance to Robert’s enduring feeling for Emma and his deep fondness for Jerry.
Designer Dahlia L’Habieli has created a handsome gallery set that ties in with Emma’s actual curator work. L’Habieli’s own paintings-including one of Venice, a mid-play setting-smartly complement the ups and downs of the characters from scene to scene.
Phaneuf and company, eager to keep Pinter’s characters from seeming nasty, still need an edgier palette. Even so, Another Country Productions and Factory Theatre do full justice to Pinter’s vivid exploration of time and love in "Betrayal."
"Betrayal," Another Country Productions and Factory Theatre, Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts, through June 5. (617) 933-8600 or bostontheatrescene.com.
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