Husband and Wife... in a "Laughing Mediterranean Way" (Betrayal - Harold Pinter)

Member Name: sottovoce1982

Product:	Betrayal - Harold Pinter
Date:	29/11/07 (255 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Well written

Disadvantages: Quite disturbing

Betrayal (1978)
by
Harold Pinter (1930- )


Do you think you know how complicated extramarital relationships can be? Well, what Harold Pinter is trying to tell you in this play is that you have absolutely no idea. The story involves two families: Robert, his wife Emma, and their two children; a boy and a girl, and Jerry, his wife Judith, and their two children who happen to be a boy and a girl as well. The only characters we meet are Emma, Robert and Jerry, and the main betrayal in question is the one that involves Emma and Jerry's affair although other forms of unfaithfulness take place. Falling in love and having an affair with the spouse's best friend looks like a clichéd and outworn subject that might evoke nothing but a sigh of boredom at first, but Pinter's touch transforms it to a very interesting and thought provoking issue.



Although we see on stage no more than three characters, in addition to the waiter who utters few words only, we are made aware of Jerry's wife and even each one of the children through the dialogue. A scene in which Jerry lifted Emma's daughter high and everybody laughed is discussed and remembered more than once in the play. This and different other dialogues that reveal specific incidents from the four children's lives make them actually involved in the adults' game although we do not see them on stage. Making the reader or playgoer aware of all those details is one of the methods that add to the complexity of what might otherwise look like nothing but a simple plot.



The play opens in the year 1977 then it goes back in time in the following scenes to the years 1975, 1973 and 1971 to shed more light on how the revelation took place, and finally to the year 1968 to find out how the betrayal itself started. The beauty of this play lies in the fact that so many complications are unveiled in very few words and numerous pauses and silences. Some of the questions tackled include: the difference between the sexes, male friendship, the distinction between a home for loving and a flat for fucking, parenthood, should the unfaithful woman "cook and slave" for two houses, how long can a brilliant cheater keep the secret, jealousy of and for whom, unfaithfulness to the lover or the espouse, etc... It would be enjoyable to keep a track of the lies being told continuously and by everyone.



One of the most memorable moments in the play is when Robert invited Jerry to play squash and have lunch with him, and when Emma offered to accompany them and invite them both to lunch, her husband refused. He explained to her that the last thing he wanted in those lunches was to have a woman around, for the fear of what he called an "improper interruption". This is only one example of the frustrations that Emma faces simply for being a woman in a society where men are considered to have more anxieties than women and consequently deserve a break from everything including the presence of a woman who actually not only speaks, but also discusses things with them.



My title refers to the scene in which Robert and Emma stayed at a hotel in Italy and the latter received a letter from her lover. Robert was asked if he wanted to take his wife's letter, which surprised him a great deal. He told his wife that those Italians think that because they are Mr. and Mrs. Downs, they are actually married in the Mediterranean way; they don't know that the husband and wife could be complete strangers.



The reverse chronological order in which the events are revealed is a very important technique in this play. You get the chance to know how Emma and Jerry's affair ended at the beginning of the play, which allows you to ponder on what led them to it. Reading more of Harold Pinter's plays, you will notice that he uses pauses and silences (longer pauses) as a technique that bares the excessive lack of communication that we suffer from. This is one way of looking at it, to add more dimensions to the picture, the instant we stop speaking in can be nothing, but if we make use of it to think it could mean everything and it can change our lives. It is incredible how the (relative) truth hits us at times in the face and yet we fail to see it or believe it. This is exactly what takes place in Betrayal, so will you at least be vigilant enough to trace the truth and find out how you lost it before?



<<< Recommended? >>>

Having read some of Pinter's plays, I admit that he is not one of my favorite writers; simply, and probably naïvely put, the man is too stable for my taste and I prefer the crazier authors. Yet, to be honest, this play is very well written, and the fact that Harold Pinter is a man of more pauses than words makes reading, or watching, it a more exquisite, albeit painful, experience. I definitely recommend reading, or watching, it because it's short, exquisitely but not excessively complicated, and, rest assured, it is not moralistic. No wonder it is all this and more; it was based on the writer's own extramarital affairs.



<<< Price and Book Info >>>

Price: £6.99 from Amazon
Paperback: 144 pages
Publisher: Faber and Faber; New Ed edition (19 Oct 1998)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0571160824
ISBN-13: 978-0571160822
Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.2 x 1.4 cm


<> If you are interested in listening to a part of the play, preceded by a short introduction, with Pinter himself as Robert, check the following link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=4960358

Summary: Analyze this.