About the work
Harold Pinter's masterful three-character play "Betrayal" was premiered in 1978 at the National Theatre in London. Its distinctive feature: it tells a story of adultery backwards in time — from its end to its beginning. Pinter drew in part on autobiographical experience from his long affair with the television presenter Joan Bakewell.
Plot
The literary agent Jerry and Emma, the wife of his best friend, the publisher Robert, have carried on a secret affair for years. The play begins in 1977, two years after the end of the relationship, at a last, melancholy meeting of the former lovers. From there the action works chronologically backwards across nine scenes: through the discovery of the affair, the secret meetings in a rented flat, to the first spark of passion at a party in 1968. Because the spectator knows the ending from the start, every earlier scene takes on a bitter irony: every promise, every tenderness is shot through with deception in the light of what is already known.
Cultural significance
Betrayal is one of the most-performed works of the Nobel laureate Harold Pinter and a model of his precise dramaturgy, shaped by pauses and intimation. The reverse chronology transforms a conventional boulevard theme into a profound study of memory, self-deception and the relativity of truth. The play has been filmed several times, most influentially with Jeremy Irons (1983), and belongs to the standard repertoire of international stages.