Review: Betrayal by Hyde Park Theatre
by Michael Meigs

 

Harold Pinter, Ken Webster.

Ken, Harold.

Pinter by Webster. Webster and Pinter. 

Similar.

Similar?

Pinter through Webster to Patrick, Robb, Guntli.

Guntli robs Patrick. Robb?

Pause. [pause] 

Pause? [long pause]

Commonplace to say Pinter's the poet of pauses. Not so.

Not? So . . . ?

Pinter's the poet of the unsaid. Of the withheld. Of the truth we don't want to know. Though we do.

 

 

Pinter's words are fine in the mouths of Brennan Patrick, Juliet Robb, and Steve Guntli. Mouths in faces I don't recall seeing before (though, Patrick? Face seems familiar. Archive, Bottle Alley . . .) What captivates, strikes, maybe makes the blood run cold—like silvery flashes in dark water, not deep, no, maybe reflections, maybe flickering fish, maybe piranha?—are the emotions, feelings, suspicions, thoughts becoming decisions behind the words.

 

Ken Webster, a man of few words, is as enamored of Pinter's work as he is of baseball. Maybe more so. For Pinter is Webster's writer. His persona. His style in this craft.

 

Without resorting to Google or, God help us, to AI, I recall that this work presenting scenes imagined between 1968 and 1974 was Pinter's way of processing the affair that broke up his own marriage. True or not, probably true, I don't care. This three-person story (with David Stahl thrown in as a disgruntled Italian waiter) concerns trust and faith. Without the one, you can't have the other. Pinter's slightly disconcerting chronological sequences, juddering forward and back, eventually culminating at the beginning, make you witness the corrosive effects of betrayed trust. The gaps, the cruelties, the indifferences, the lying and the lashing out. Two men, close friends from school days, the woman who in the interval of the story is the wife of one and simultaneously, except in the end shown at the beginning, the devoted lover of the other. Lover? Or not. User? Deceiver? Deceiver of both, though at different times and rates.

 

But each betrays the other. A triple cross, all directions. Emma x Jerry x Robert. Robb x Guntli x Patrick. No hearts broken. A heart is too devoted. A heart is faithful. A heart pumps. It emotes. What if Emma hadn't hidden what over time became determined, heedless adultery? Little secrets, like little bugs, jump on the backs of other secrets and they bite 'em, and so ad infinitum. 

 

The dénoument of Pinter's Betrayal occurs in the middle of Pinter's exploration. Emma and Robert, married for several years, vacation in Venice. In a lengthy, understated, alarming scene Robert tells the story of visiting American Express to pick up his mail (there's a vanished service for you) and being handed a letter for Emma by the carefree clerk. Last name the same. He doesn't accept it. But he sees the handwriting of the address and recognizes it. Knows Jerry sent it. Little is revealed, little is confessed, the letter isn't forthcoming. Brennan Patrick's telling is restrained, calm, non-judgmental; Juliet Robb's face, gestures, eyes, and demeanor listening from her lounge chair in negligent décolleté, are a private world of emotion trapped by logic and circumstance.

 

Steve Guntli's the well-meaning enthusiast and fumbler who believes he loves both the others. He panicks in opening scenes when told the affair has just been revealed. That's a partial lie. As Pinter rings the changes on the triple relationship in mostly reverse chronological order, Guntli probably emerges as the least dislikable of the three; eventually, in the end that's the beginning, he appears as Emma's tipsy admirer at her wedding. (Which of them seduces the other?) Guntli's performance is consistent thoughout, although presented mostly back to front; his is a character you cannot hate, though you can deplore his well-meant, disastrous deceit.

 

Mark Pickell's set design is minimal and modular. Stage ninjas shift items and swiftly reconfigure them like Lego blocks  The mostly empty set keeps the audience's focus on the words. Robert Fisher's discreet projections of typed labels for dates and places appear on the stage apron and otherwise blank black back wall. They keep attendees aware of the curious chronology, explained by Webster himself in his typically terse and offhand curtain speech. (No, there's no curtain. Never has been. Not at the Hyde Park Theatre. Not enough space for that.)

 

Betrayal has sold out virtually every night of its four-week run at the Hyde Park Theatre, which in addition to indy work presents the most thoughtful, powerful contemporary work in Austin. They even added a Sunday afternoon performance, virtually unheard of for these players.

 

Missed it? I'm sorry for you. Pay closer attention. Do better next time.

 

EXTRA

Click to view .pdfs of the Hyde Park Theatre's program for The Betrayal.  (From camera photos; I'm traveling with no access to a scanner.)

 

 

 

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Betrayal
by Harold Pinter
Hyde Park Theatre

June 26 - July 26, 2025

Added performance Sunday, July 27

Hyde Park Theatre, Austin

www.hydeparktheatre.com