Betrayal review: Tom Hiddleston's poise and sensitivity impress in elegant Pinter finale

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Henry Hitchings14 March 2019

Harold Pinter’s 1978 play traces the troubled course of an affair — in reverse, from aftermath to sweet beginnings. It’s an approach that focuses the audience not on what happens, but on how it unfolds. We become analysts of secrets and lies, picking apart the syntax of pain and concealment.

The big draw in Jamie Lloyd’s revival is an irresistibly magnetic Tom Hiddleston. As Robert, a publisher married to Zawe Ashton’s Emma, he at first appears brusque and bored. Yet his cool self-assurance is a mask, and behind it there’s a deep well of emotion.

The love triangle is completed by Jerry, a literary agent and supposedly Robert’s best friend. In the hands of Charlie Cox he’s likeable — and good at seeming guileless when in fact he’s slippery. Emma shares some radiant moments with him, and Ashton combines ardour with a vulnerable, fidgety uncertainty that registers most obviously in the way she constantly moves her shoulders.

But it’s Hiddleston’s poise and sensitivity that impress the most. There’s a brilliant scene that demonstrates his usually under-exploited flair for comedy: toying with Jerry over lunch in an Italian restaurant, he humiliates the feckless waiter, attacks his prosciutto as though fighting a duel, and gulps white wine like a bandit. Yet he’s also genuinely moving, and when he weeps his eyes and cheeks glisten with tears.

Everything in Lloyd’s minimalist staging feels precisely calibrated. Whenever two of the characters are conversing, the third lingers in the background. Silences are extended, so that we concentrate on the eloquence of gestures and facial expressions. The result is a sense of Robert, Emma and Jerry as a trio engaged in a haunting dance, and at times it’s as if the three of them have merged into one.

This sparse, elegant production closes Lloyd’s revelatory and handsomely cast season of Pinter’s shorter pieces in the theatre that bears the playwright’s name. Like so much of this six-month venture, it’s a surprising and unsparing interpretation, in which every detail counts.

Until June 1

First look at Tom Hiddleston in rehearsals for Betrayal

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