Review: Betrayal

Betrayal
MTC presents the State Theatre Company of SA production
29 August 2015
The Sumner
to 3 October
mtc.com.au

Betrayal. MTC. Photo by Shane Reid

Following seasons in Adelaide and Canberra, Geordie Brookman’s production of Harold Pinter’s 1978 play Betrayal has opened at the MTC. Inspired by the writer’s own relationships, it’s a remarkable exploration of betrayal from the irrelevant to the heartbreaking, and the personal to the professional.

It opens with Emma (Alison Bell) and Jerry (Nathan O’Keefe) meeting at a bar after their extra marital relationship had ended and she reveals that her marriage to Jerry’s best friend Robert (Mark Saturno) is over. Told in reverse chronological order (mostly), it leaves the audience knowing more than the characters do, so instead of asking “what happens next?”, they can ask “why did they behave like that?”. And without the need for exposition, the writer and characters are able to be completely in the moment and free to be silent.

The transfer to the bigger Sumner Theatre results in a loss of the intimacy that magnifies the relationships on the stage (go for the closer seats) – and makes Geoff Cobham’s clothes-rack revolve design feel more contrived than natural – but the power of the held back performances still reaches the back corners.

The gut kick of Betrayal lies in understanding people who never say what they mean and whose need for control and appearance is more driving than any real love that might be there. This isn’t a wild romance about heartbreak and selfless love, it’s about the far-easier selfish choices that feel uncomfortably familiar.

As the truth of Pinter’s writing is in the subtext of his in-the-text pauses, it becomes clearer when the performances are pulled back and the emotion lives in the emptiness between the characters.

Brookman’s direction ensures that this empty space is wide and clear. Touch – and the emotion connection it represents – is kept to the ritual of a handshake or an hello kiss, or the necessity of sexual desire. And as each scene answers questions to the one that came before, the cast show the moments that set up new barriers and closed down moments of connection.

O’Keefe’s Jerry starts closed and bitter and becomes more open and relatively innocent as time moves backwards, as Saturno’s Robert starts closed and angry and becomes more trusting and content. But it’s Bell’s Emma who holds the heart of the work.

Bell’s contained performance is staggering in its depth and quiet power. She holds back every emotion and reaction that Emma wants to scream but never will. She lets Emma know her weaknesses and accept that she will betray and be betrayed to keep the appearance of happiness, even if no one is happy.

The adultery in Betrayal is never what really hurts the characters or breaks them apart. It’s the little moments about table clothes or broken down speedboats that build into a silence that lets people choose to betray themselves and everything they’ve worked for and wanted rather than acknowledge every betrayal they’ve faced and committed. If Pinter tells us anything, it’s listen to the moments of silence.

This was on AussieTheatre.com

Knives in Hens

Knives in Hens
5 August 2009
Malthouse Theatre
Beckett Theatre, CUB Malthouse

Anyone who knows David Harrower’s remarkable Blackbird, will be eager to see his Olivier Award winning Knives in Hens, written in 1995. This co-production by Malthouse Theatre and the State Theatre of South Australia is almost mesmerising, but gets lost in its interpretation

Anna Cordingley’s design strikes before a word is spoken, as she continues to prove her stunning visual aesthetic. We are at the end of huge drain in a world coloured by rust and moss and mud. The circles and water give lighting genius Paul Jackson a canvas that rarely disappoints our eyes – but this beautiful, beautiful design works against the text. I loved how Cordingley’s recent design for Happy Days created an incongruous gap between the text and the design, but here its dissonance is confusing and frustrating.

The huge concrete pipe with the rural-looking costumes and straightforward language of the text immediately establishes a post-now, post-apocalyptic world, as it’s a society that has created giant drains big enough for an industrial city and probably destroyed itself. Suggesting an unknown future, as an audience who know how to read stage language, we search for clues about this world - that aren’t there. In the program, Cordingley says, “The opportunities in the drain pipe offered up for Paul’s lighting and Geordie’s (Brookman – director) physical blocking were instantly compelling.” Which they are, but how does this help to tell the story and share this text?

Harrower’s text is full of metaphors and his magnificent words summon vivid visions of a rural landscape and its struggling people. As productions all over the world have proven, the dense text never restricts the creators in their interpretation, but nothing else in this production is congruous with the giant drain, so the text and the stage worlds never become one.

For all the wonderful things about Knives in Hens, it is a confusing experience. Kate Box, Robert Menzies and Dan Spielman’s performances are individually perfect, but they don’t acknowledge the world they are living in, be it moving through the water the same as they move on solid ground, letting us believe that they can see a village at the other end of the pipe or creating a relationship subtext between the characters.

This could be because Brookman’s direction is felt too much on the stage, from ‘compelling’ blocking that doesn’t always sit with the text to performance levels that restrict the performers. They start so intensely that importance becomes meaningless because they have nowhere to go. There’s a constant tension and we feel and hear a lot of powerful emotion, but it lacks light and shade, and is so relentless that there isn’t enough room for the text to speak.

This production feels like it is trying so hard to bring an originality and a theatrical intelligence to the script, that it forgets to trust the script and forgets to tell the story to the audience. As it runs, it may forget about trying to be so clever and relax enough to let the story free. And, if they can make that drain a vital part of the telling, it may still be seen as one of the best designs of the year.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.