Study Guide

Written by Sara Clifford

Edited by Aimee Barnett
Photographs by Catherine Ashmore
This programme has been made possible by the generous
support of Sir John Cass’s Foundation, John Lyons’ Charity
and Universal Consolidated Group

 Contents

Section 1: Cast list and creative team

Section 2: The playwright: Harold Pinter, his life and work

Section 3: Political and social context

British theatre in the 1950s
A new direction
Art, politics and ‘truth’

Section 4: The play: Betrayal

Themes:
What is it about?
Why is it told backwards?
Who are the characters?
Who is betraying who?
How many betrayals?
Using autobiographical material
Playing Pinter:
Self deception and ‘masks’
The balance of power
The dot and the pause

Section 5: Betrayal in performance

The Donmar production – an interview with Alex Sims, Resident
Assistant Director at the Donmar Warehouse

Section 6: Reading
Bibliography

Appendix
Articles about the origins of Betrayal
Article about Pinter on his 70th birthday


 1
section
Cast and Creative Team

Characters and actors

Emma Robert, her Jerry Waiter

Dervla Kirwan husband Toby Stephens Paul Di Rollo
Samuel West

Pinter’s notes tell us that in 1977 (the end of the play), Emma is 38 and Jerry and
Robert are 40.

Creative team

Director Roger Michell

Designer William Dudley

Lighting Designer Rick Fisher

Sound Designer John Owens

Composer Alec Dankworth

Video Systems Designers Alan and Alex Cox


 2
section
The Playwright: Harold Pinter, his life
and work

Harold Pinter is one of the world’s leading playwrights, and is equally well known
as a director, actor, poet and political activist. Born on 10 October 1930 in East
London, the son of a Jewish tailor, he attended Hackney Downs Grammar
School, and went on to study acting for two terms at RADA in 1948-9. By 1949,
not only had he written his first piece, Kullus, but he had already been tried as a
conscientious objector (someone who refuses to fight in a war on the grounds
of conscience), and this dual commitment to both his art and to politics has
continued throughout his career.
In 2005, Harold Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the highest
honour available to any writer in the world. In announcing the award, Horace
Engdahl, Chairman of the Swedish Academy, said that Pinter was an artist ‘who
in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into
oppression’s closed rooms.’
Recently retired from playwriting after completing 29 plays and 22 screenplays,
Pinter remains, ‘to his credit, a permanent public nuisance’ (Michael Billington),
composing ‘poems, sketches, articles and passionate, antagonistic political
pieces.’

Pinter’s work
Pinter has written 29 plays including The Birthday Party (1957); The Dumb Waiter
(1957); The Caretaker (1959) – recently revived at Sheffield Theatres, Tricycle
Theatre and Richmond Theatre; The Dwarfs (1960); The Homecoming (1964); The
Basement (1966); Landscape (1967); Silence (1968); Old Times (1970) – produced
at the Donmar Warehouse directed by Roger Michell in 2004; Monologue (1972);
No Man’s Land (1974); Betrayal (1978); Family Voices (1980); and with Victoria
Station and A Kind Of Alaska under the title Other Places (1982); One For The
Road (1984); Mountain Language (1988); The New World Order (1991); Party Time
(1991); Moonlight (1993); Ashes To Ashes (1996); Celebration (1999). His most
recent work includes Sketch Press Conference (2002) and Sketch Apart From That
(2006).
He has also written over 20 screenplays including The Caretaker (1962); The
Pumpkin Eater (1963); The Servant (1963); Accident (1966); The Birthday Party
(1967); The Go-Between (1969); The Homecoming (1969); A La Recherche Du
Temps Perdu (1972) not filmed; The French Lietenant’s Woman (1980); Betrayal
(1981); The Handmaid’s Tale (1987); The Heat Of The Day (1988); The Comfort Of
Strangers (1989); The Trial (1989) and Sleuth (2007).
Pinter has directed nearly 30 theatre productions, including James Joyce’s Exiles;
David Mamet’s Oleanna; Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird Of Youth; seven plays
by Simon Gray, and many of his own plays, including The Birthday Party (1964);
Party Time and Mountain Language (1991); The New World Order (1991); Ashes
To Ashes (1996); Celebration and The Room (2000); No Man’s Land (2001).
His acting career spans 50 years, from his early touring days in rep, to appearing
in productions of his own plays, The Caretaker – Mick, Duchess Theatre (1960);
The Homecoming – Lenny, Watford Theatre (1969); Old Times – Deeley, Los
Angeles (1985); No Man’s Land – Hirst, Almeida and Comedy Theatre (1992-3);

 The Collection - Harry, Gate Theatre, Dublin (1997) and Donmar Warehouse (1998);
One For The Road - Nicolas, New Ambassadors Theatre, London (2001) and
Lincoln Center Festival, New York (2001); Sketch Press Conference, Royal National
Theatre (2002).
Literary prizes include a CBE, 1966; European Prize for Literature (Vienna) 1973;
Pirandello Prize (Palermo) 1980; The David Cohen British Literature Prize 1995;
Laurence Olivier Special Award 1996; Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence
1997; BAFTA Fellowship 1997; Companion of Literature, RSL 1998; The Critics’
Circle Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts 2000; South Bank Show Award
for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts, 2001; S.T. Dupont Golden Pen Award
2001 for a Lifetime’s Distinguished Service to Literature; ‘Premio Fiesole ai
Maestri del Cinema’, Italy, 2001; World Leaders Award, Toronto, Canada, 2001;
Nobel Prize for Literature, 2005; European Theatre Prize, 2006.
His work in politics has been recognised by the following:
Hermann Kesten Medallion for outstanding commitment on behalf of persecuted
and imprisoned writers, awarded by German P.E.N., Berlin, Germany, 2001;
Wilfred Owen Poetry Prize, 2005, for his work opposing the war in Iraq; Frank
Kafka Prize, 2005; Serbian Foundation Prize, 2006; Legion d’Honneur, 2007.
He also has honorary degrees from 17 universities.
Harold Pinter is married to Lady Antonia Fraser and lives in London.


 3
section
Political and social context

British theatre in the 1950s

Beginning in autumn 1948, for two terms Pinter attended the Royal Academy
of Dramatic Art (RADA). Later that year, he was called up for National Service,
registered as a conscientious objector, was brought to trial twice, and ultimately
fined by the magistrate for refusing to serve. He took his toothbrush with him to
both trials, ready to go to prison.
He ‘loath[ed]’ RADA, and dropped out in 1949. Following a further two terms at
Central School of Speech and Drama, Pinter began his career in the theatre as an
actor, working in weekly ‘rep’ or repertory theatre.
In Britain, rep usually involved a weekly turnaround of plays, with six evening and
two matinee performances, with rehearsals during the days for the next week’s
production. Between 1954 and 1959, having adopted his grandmother’s maiden
name, Pinter acted with the stage name David Baron in more than 80 plays around
the country. With such a fierce time pressure, there was little opportunity to
explore the writing or the direction in any depth, and these old style companies
frequently revolved around an actor-manager, who would build the production
around himself, often in a highly theatrical style. Whilst this has proved an
invaluable training ground for many now established actors and playwrights, it
could also be exhausting and unrewarding, and Pinter once told his friends that
acting was a ‘shithouse of a profession.’ (Michael Billington, The Life and Work of
Harold Pinter)
New writing for British theatre at this time mostly consisted of drawing room
comedies and dramas, written by and for the middle classes. However, a sea
change was about to happen, following the advent of free education after the
war; a new generation of working class grammar school educated young men and
women burst on to the scene, with new stories to tell. Beginning in the ‘50s and
on into the early ‘60s, these were the ‘angry young men’, determined to change
not only theatre, but the whole of society and its structures, later to lead on into
the revolutionary politics of the late ‘60s. Spearheaded by the Royal Court Theatre,
these writers included John Osborne with Look Back in Anger (1956); Arnold
Wesker with Chicken Soup with Barley (1958); and Shelagh Delaney with A Taste
of Honey (1958).
Alongside these British so-called ‘kitchen sink dramas’, other European plays were
being performed which offered a more abstract or ‘absurd’ form of theatre, aiming
to combine human tragedy with farce. This was exemplified by Samuel Beckett’s
Waiting for Godot (1955) and Eugene Ionesco’s The Chairs (1952), both writers
who challenged the form and content of established theatre.
At a time when cinema and mass entertainment through television were
conspiring to reduce attendance at the theatre, ‘Pinter belonged to a generation of
playwrights who, together, were to redefine the very nature of British drama and
rewrite the established rules.’ (Mark Batty, About Pinter: the Playwright and the
work)


 A new direction
Betrayal was written in what could be regarded as the third phase of Pinter’s work.
His early plays, the first phase, include The Room and The Birthday Party - The
Room arose when he mentioned to a friend, Henry Woolf, who was working in
the drama department of Bristol University, that he had an idea for a play. Woolf
liked the idea so much that he asked Pinter to write it, but on the condition that he
would need it within a week if the university was to perform it. Pinter wrote back
and told him to forget it!
‘And then I sat down and wrote it in four days. I don’t know how it happened,
but it did.’
Interview with Kenneth Tynan, BBC, 1960


 As Martin Esslin has pointed out (Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd),
this play ‘already contains a good many of the basic themes and a great deal
of the very personal style and idiom of Pinter’s later and more successful work
- the uncannily cruel accuracy of his reproduction of the inflections and rambling
irrelevancy of everyday speech; the commonplace situation that is gradually
invested with menace, dread and mystery; the deliberate omission of an
explanation or motivation for the action.’ (Esslin)
Pinter also used a room as the primary poetic image of the play, another recurring
motif in Pinter’s work:
‘What is going to happen to these two people in the room? Is someone going
to open the door and come in?’
Pinter, interview with Hallam Tennyson, BBC, 1960

Betrayal ends (and therefore actually begins) with this very set up; Emma and
Jerry are in a room together, and she says:
Emma My husband is at the other side of that door.
As Jerry declares his love for Emma and kisses her for the first time, Robert opens
the door and comes in, and so the lies, the dramatic tension, and therefore the
story, start.
Back in the ‘50s, such was the success of The Room that Pinter was able to write
The Birthday Party, which opened at the Lyric Hammersmith in 1958 following a
regional tour. However, the praise that it had attracted on tour was not repeated in
London, and the critics were harsh, accusing it of obscurity and forcing it to close
after just eight performances. This was a bitter disappointment for Pinter, but the
following year saw the premieres of The Room and The Dumb Waiter in London,
where Pinter wrote a programme note that might ward off a similar critical
response:
‘A character on the stage, who can present no convincing argument
or information as to his past experience, his present behaviour or his
aspirations, nor give a comprehensive analysis of his motives, is as legitimate
and as worthy as one who, alarmingly, can do all these things.’
Harold Pinter, Various Voices

Pinter has steadfastly maintained this approach to his characters throughout his
writing career, saying that not only does he not lead them in a narrative of cause
and effect, he often doesn’t know what they are going to do at all, famously
labelling them A, B and C, and seeing what they say to each other before he can
ascertain their relationship. In his Nobel Prize speech, he said:
‘Most of the plays are engendered by a line, a word or an image. The given word
is often shortly followed by the image… The first line of The Homecoming is:
“What have you done with the scissors?”... I had no further information...
someone was obviously looking for a pair of scissors and was demanding their
whereabouts of someone else he suspected had probably stolen them. But I
somehow knew that the person addressed didn’t give a damn about the scissors
or about the questioner either, for that matter.’


 Again, we can see this in Betrayal, where none of the characters gives any reason
or motivation for their duplicitous behaviour – it just seems to happen, almost as if
beyond their control, although the effects of that behaviour are immense.

Discussion Point
Discuss Pinter’s viewpoint on characters and their motivations - do you agree? Do you think you
need to know a character’s motives in order to understand and/or enjoy a play?
Compare examples from plays where a character’s motivation is clear, with some of Pinter’s work,
where he gives no motives.

What Pinter was offering was ‘a form of drama unprecedented on the British
stage’ (Batty), a modernist approach; there was no longer a reliable point of view,
such as the writer’s, that could be seen as true. Instead, Pinter shows us many
different perspectives, and characters whose idea of what is ‘true’ shifts according
to their current circumstances. And although many critics were still dismissive of
his work, others, such as the critic Harold Hobson, identified it as part of ‘a new
direction’ in British theatre. Martin Esslin named this new direction as the ‘Theatre
of the Absurd’, citing Pinter, Beckett and Ionesco, amongst others, as creating
‘A new language, new ideas, new approaches, and a new vitalised philosophy to
transform the modes of thought and feeling of the public.’ (Esslin)
By 1960, Pinter was commissioned to write an Armchair Theatre television play, A
Night Out, and in the same week that it aired, The Caretaker opened, leading the
Times to describe his ‘meteoric rise from our least understood avant garde writer
to, virtually, our most popular young playwright.’
The second phase of Pinter’s work includes two of his best known plays, The
Caretaker and The Homecoming, as well as the film, The Servant, and, although
seen as more metaphorical and allusive, they explore some of Pinter’s favourite
themes in human relationships; who is telling the truth to whom and when? Who
has dominance or power and when? What is the relationship between men and
women? All these themes would be revisited in Betrayal.
Following The Homecoming, however, Pinter experienced something of a writer’s
block. He had become very successful, and was endlessly discussed and critically
examined, until by 1971, he felt:
‘He’s not me. He’s someone else’s creation.’
Interview, About Pinter

Theatre was changing again, with the influence of Antoin Artaud, Growtowski’s
‘Poor Theatre’ and Peter Brook’s artistic laboratory explorations of Marat/Sade
(1964) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1970). The Arts Council was beginning
to fund more experimental fringe work, but Pinter found that this was not where
his work was placed, and, in contrast to this, ‘was and remained an essentially
traditional playwright and.. maintains a focus on the text.’ (Batty)
Old Times (1971), and No Man’s Land (1975) signalled a new direction in Pinter’s
work, exploring how the past invades and informs the present, focussing on

 close relationships, and this is where we can place Betrayal. He was particularly
interested in ‘how memory, by its very nature, is an act of the present, and cannot
therefore be a verifiable record of the past’ (Batty):
‘The past is not the past’ and ‘one’s previous parts are alive and present.’
Conversations with Pinter, Mel Gussow

As the character Anna says in Old Times:

Anna There are some things one remembers even though they may
never have happened. There are things I remember which may
never have happened, but as I recall them, so they take place.
And in Betrayal, Jerry remembers:
Jerry Listen. Do you remember, when was it, a few years ago, we were
all in your kitchen, must have been Christmas or something, do you
remember, all the kids were running about and I suddenly picked
Charlotte up and lifted her high up, high up, and then down and up.
Do you remember how she laughed?
EMMA Everyone laughed.
JERRY She was so light. And there was your husband and my wife and all
the kids, all standing and laughing in your kitchen. I can’t get rid of
it.
EMMA It was your kitchen, actually.
(Scene Six)
As we have seen in the first scene, Jerry always misremembers this scene as
taking place in Emma’s kitchen.

Discussion Point
Why does Pinter have Jerry recalling this memory twice in the play?
Why does Jerry always think it was Emma’s kitchen?
Are there other times when memory is called into question in the play? Why is this important?

In No Man’s Land, about a frozen writer, the poet is locked in the past, unable to
connect with either his creativity or with others. Together with Betrayal, these
plays present ‘warnings against behaviour that might lead to social or emotional
paralysis.’ (Batty)
The final phase of Pinter’s writing is heralded by Family Voices (1982, part of A
Kind of Alaska), where the family is becoming a shelter, rather than a metaphor
for disintegration, and again in One for the Road (1984). It is the repression and
destruction of the family that takes him on into his ‘political’ plays, Mountain
Language (1988) and Party Time (1991), and a time in his life when his political
passion has dominated his outlook, particularly against the United States, and its
repressions around the world, from Nicaragua to Iraq. In 1985, he visited Turkey
10
 with Arthur Miller to represent International PEN, an organisation that offers
solidarity with imprisoned writers around the world. Pinter said:
‘I remember years ago I regarded myself as an artist in an ivory tower.. I’ve
now totally rejected that. I find that the things that are actually happening
are not only of the greatest importance, but (have) the most crucial bearing
on our lives, including this matter of censorship of people and writers’
imprisonment, torture, and the whole question of how we are dealt with by
governments who are in power.’
Interview in About Pinter

11
 Art, politics and ‘truth’
When Pinter gave his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 2005, he began:
‘In 1958 I wrote the following:
 There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor
“
between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or
false; it can be both true and false.”
I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration
of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a
citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?’
Pinter used his speech as an opportunity to make a political comment about truth
in relation to conflicts around the world, such as Iraq, but these investigations
of what constitutes ‘truth’ have marked all his work, both as an artist and as an
activist:
‘Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it, but the search for it is
compulsive.. More often than not, you stumble upon the truth in the dark.. often
without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there is never
any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These
truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each
other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have
the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost...
But the search for the truth can never stop. It cannot be adjourned, it cannot be
postponed. It has to be faced, right there on the spot.’
Batty adds, ‘As an artist, his concerns have involved charting the anatomy of
truth as a phenomenon constructed by the individual’s perceptions of experience,
tempered by the vagaries of memory, by the challenges and invasions of others,
and by longings and fears coloured by denial, betrayal and anxiety. As an engaged
citizen, he strives to keep the truth of the fact of human oppression centre-stage,
and...target those who abuse power and manipulate language to keep those truths
obscured.’

Discussion Point
How far should an artist be involved with ‘politics’?
Can you think of other writers or artists who engage directly with politics, either in the UK or
abroad?
How do they do this, and what do we mean by ‘politics’ in this context?

12
 4
section
Themes in Betrayal

What is it about?
Written in 1978, Betrayal tells one of the oldest stories in the world: a love
triangle, where the woman, Emma, has betrayed her husband, Robert, with his
best friend, Jerry, for seven years.
As outlined above, Pinter does not set up a conflict to be resolved: there are no
heroes or villains – each person is guilty of many betrayals over the years, of
betraying their wife or husband or best friend, and this series of betrayals leaves
them washed up on the remains of their relationships, where all trust and love has
been destroyed.

Why is it told backwards?

The story is told in reverse, and this backwards structure ‘stops its audience
concentrating on cause and effect and making the associated moral judgements
that this might ordinarily induce. Instead, it is difficult to isolate a villain of the
piece, and each character elicits our disdain and admiration in different measures
at different stages.’ (Batty)
In other words, this structure for the play supports the idea that there are many
realities and changing viewpoints in life, and that no one sets out with a clear
motivation for their actions. The characters sometimes seem to drift into decisions
and choices, deceiving themselves and others into further acts of betrayal, and
this self deception lies at the heart of the play. As Alex Sims, Assistant Director
of the Donmar Warehouse production points out below, the actors spent many
hours in rehearsal defining which characters are lying to themselves and when,
and when they are lying to others and why. Sometimes a pause leads to further
betrayal, when in fact it could have been a moment of indecision: for example, the
first time Jerry kisses Emma in 1968 in Scene Nine, she breaks away. The stage
directions merely indicate:
He kisses her.
She breaks away.
He kisses her.
The whole play hinges on the moment when she breaks away - will she slap his
face, leave the room, laugh or – what she does - allow him to kiss her again.
It would seem that our lives are full of these moments, when different paths
present themselves, and we often take the path of least resistance, lying to
ourselves, changing our memories.
Because the play is told backwards, we, as the audience, know what the
characters don’t – we know how it is all going to turn out. We know who has said
what in the scene before (i.e. the consequences of their actions, chronologically).
Telling the story backwards also allows us to see the original innocent characters
emerging from the maze of deceit and false memory they have created over the
years. As Jack Kroll said in a review of the first production:
‘It’s like watching a flower blossom backward, its petals inexorably closing.’

13
 Who are the characters?
Sarah Hemming, in a review of the 2003 Peter Hall production states that the
characters change over the course of the play, as they move backwards in time.
Emma moves from ‘bruised wisdom to sexual power’; Robert is ‘brittle and tight
lipped’ when we first meet him, becoming ‘confident’ as the play reverses; and
Jerry is full of ‘rumpled regret’, becoming ‘ardent and impulsive’.
The two families are so close that Jerry remembers the scene in the kitchen when
he threw Charlotte, Emma’s daughter, up in the air:
JERRY And there was your husband and my wife and all the kids, all
standing and laughing in your kitchen.

Practical Exercise
When you watch the play, try and see how the actors show these changes across time.
Who is your sympathy with – at the beginning? At the end?
What do you think the characters’ real feelings are for each other – do Jerry and Emma love each
other? Does Jerry love his wife? Does Robert love Emma? Does it change over the course of the
play?
Why does Pinter give Robert the lines about hitting Emma ‘once or twice’ (‘the old itch’)?

Who is betraying who?

Samuel West, who plays Robert, said in a recent interview with the Evening
Standard that when he looked up the definition of the word betrayal, he
discovered:
• to deliver to an enemy by treachery or disloyalty;
• to be unfaithful in guarding, maintaining or fulfilling;
• to seduce and desert – this is the one Samuel liked best.
The play explores the ‘seduce and desert’ definition most closely – but it is not
only Jerry who seduces Emma, having betrayed Robert’s friendship and Emma
who deserts Robert; Jerry deserts Emma after several years of their affair; while
Robert, in the end, deserts Jerry, when he tells him that he has known for some
time about the affair. Their friendship can never recover.
Jerry has been ‘unfaithful’ in fulfilling his friendship with Robert – a friendship
implies trust, and Jerry has broken this trust through disloyalty.
Emma has been disloyal to her husband; Robert has been unfaithful to Emma, and
has had many affairs. He even suggests that he actually liked Jerry better than
Emma, in the way that male friendship excludes women:
ROBERT To be honest I’ve liked him rather more than I’ve liked you. Perhaps
I should have had an affair with him myself.

14
 Meanwhile, it is suggested, Judith, the unseen wife of Jerry, has also been
unfaithful. And how complicit has Robert been in the affair all along? It has even
been suggested that it was convenient for Robert, so that he would have an alibi
for his own affairs, and so he allowed that first scene in the bedroom to take
place. Paradoxically, the very betrayals that destroy them also bind them - for a
while. And while Jerry is the prime mover, he also becomes the ultimate outsider
in the drama.
There is also the loss of their love of literature, a betrayal in their careers of a
deeper vision that they once had; yet another betrayal that arises from the initial
moment when Emma stays in the room with Jerry.
As Michael Billington says:
‘Behind the play’s action, lies an aching awareness of the way the high ideals
of youth are betrayed by the compromises of daily life. Jerry and Robert
were both, as undergraduates, editors of poetry magazines.. Now Jerry is an
agent hawking around a writer called Casey, who is a useful money spinner,
but little more; Robert, a successful publisher, drunkenly confesses that he
hates the whole business of pushing, promoting and selling modern prose
literature. They are not only parasitic literary middlemen, but, by extension,
symbols of all those who betray their youthful commitment for the sake of
bland, middle aged affluence.’
Michael Billington

This terrible web of treachery, disloyalty, breach of trust and desertion leads to the
endless betrayals between the characters that destroy their marriages, careers
and any hope of love or friendship.
As Peter Hall says:
‘If you just receive the play without digging underneath it, it’s a rather trite
story. The obvious question is “Who is being betrayed?”… The sleight of
hand that Harold has performed is that, while dealing with the triangular
relationship, he’s talking about something else. He seems to be saying that
if you start with self-betrayal, it gradually infects everything else, like a
dreadful, destructive virus.’
Michael Billington, About Pinter

15
16
 How many betrayals?
Alex Sims, Assistant Director, says that in rehearsals, they counted up to 52
different moments of betrayal – so who has betrayed whom?
For example:
• Jerry betrays his friendship with Robert by having an affair with Emma;
• Emma betrays her husband Robert, with her affair with Jerry;
• Robert betrays Emma by having several secret affairs throughout their marriage;
• Robert betrays Jerry, when he reveals that he has known for four years about his
affair with Emma, and didn’t tell him that he knew;
• Emma betrays Jerry in that she hasn’t told him that she has told Robert about
their affair.

Discussion and Exercise

Discuss the different ‘betrayals’ in the play. Think about moments when people withhold
information to see what the other person will say, such as when Jerry asks Robert about the
speedboat, having already had a conversation with Emma about it; or a bigger active moment
such as when Emma decides to stay in the room with Jerry as he grasps her arm, right at the
end/beginning of the play.
How does Robert betray Jerry and Emma in other parts of the play?
How many examples of betrayal can you find in the following extract from Scene Six?
Think about what information you know about the characters and their relationships, and from
the preceding scenes.

The room is dimly lit. JERRY is sitting in the shadows. Faint music through the
door.
The door opens. Light. Music. EMMA comes in, closes the door. She goes
towards the mirror, sees JERRY.
EMMA Good God.
JERRY I’ve been waiting for you.
EMMA What do you mean?
JERRY I knew you’d come.
He drinks.
EMMA I’ve just come in to comb my hair.
He stands.
JERRY I knew you’d have to. I knew you’d have to comb your hair. I knew
you’d have to get away from the party.
She goes to the mirror, combs her hair.

17
 He watches her.
JERRY You’re a beautiful hostess.
EMMA Aren’t you enjoying the party?
JERRY You’re beautiful.
He goes to her.
JERRY Listen. I’ve been watching you all night. I must tell you, I want to
tell you, I have to tell you –
EMMA Please-
JERRY You’re incredible.
EMMA You’re drunk.
JERRY Nevertheless.
He holds her.
EMMA Jerry.
JERRY I was best man at your wedding. I saw you in white. I watched you
glide by in white.
EMMA I wasn’t in white.
JERRY You know what should have happened?
EMMA What?
JERRY I should have had you, in your white, before the wedding. I should
have blackened you, in your white wedding dress, blackened you
in your bridal dress, before ushering you into your wedding, as your
best man.
EMMA My husband’s best man. Your best friend’s best man.
JERRY No. Your best man.
EMMA I must get back.

The scene progresses and then:

He kisses her.
She breaks away.
He kisses her.
Laughter off.
She breaks away.
Door opens. ROBERT.
EMMA Your best friend is drunk.
JERRY As you are my best and oldest friend and, in the present instance,
my host, I decided to take this opportunity to tell your wife how
beautiful she was.
ROBERT Quite right.

18
 JERRY It is quite right, to .. face up to the facts.. and to offer a token,
without blush, a token of one’s unalloyed appreciation, no holds
barred.
ROBERT Absolutely.
JERRY And how wonderful for you that this is so, that this is the case, that
her beauty is the case.
ROBERT Quite right.
JERRY moves to ROBERT and takes hold of his elbow.
JERRY I speak as your oldest friend. Your best man.
ROBERT You are, actually.
He clasps JERRY’S shoulder briefly, turns, leaves the room.
EMMA moves towards the door. JERRY grasps her arm. She stops still.
They stand still, looking at each other.
(END)

Using autobiographical material

As mentioned below, Betrayal is based on real events: the long standing affair that
Pinter had with Joan Bakewell, despite his friendship with her husband, Michael
Bakewell. As Billington says, ‘His stage plays are triggered by a sharp memory of
some personal experience, which then develops its own internal logic.’
Although Pinter initially didn’t acknowledge that the play was based on his own
life, he later did, and when questioned about the potential moral dilemma (another
betrayal perhaps?) involved in using this material, he said:
‘I think every writer does that one way or another. Otherwise what are we
writing about? We’re writing about something to do with ourselves and
observable reality about us. .. But I think, as long as the work is written with
understanding, it is legitimate….
For example, in Betrayal, I think the situation that the wife finds herself
in, is one which a lot of people will associate with.. It’s a situation you find
yourself in, and what do you do about it? You live it and you find your ways
out..’
The Life and work of Harold Pinter

19
 Practical Exercise
Individually, decide on an early, happy memory you are open to sharing. Discuss these memories
with a partner. What do you remember about it? How can you be sure it happened? Have you
been told about it by a family member, or seen a photograph? What feelings do you associate
with it? Why do you think you remember it?
Then individually write a paragraph about the memory their partner has told them. Share and
discuss: what has been remembered, what forgotten? What seemed important to the listener?
Try acting these paragraphs out for each other. Does this change the story again?

Playing Pinter: Self deception and ‘masks’

Assistant Director Alex Sims comments below that a really important note from
Harold Pinter when they first started rehearsing was:
‘Don’t show what you can conceal.’
It is important to identify when the characters are lying to themselves and others,
and when they are really speaking the truth. Alex highlights how important it is
that the actors never play what the characters are really feeling, and that they
instead wear a ‘mask’ for their feelings - and that it is crucial therefore to pin down
when the mask is momentarily dropped - and then reinstated.

From Scene One

JERRY When did he tell you all this?
EMMA Last night. I think we were up all night.
Pause.
JERRY You talked all night?
EMMA Yes. Oh yes.
Pause.
JERRY I didn’t come into it, did I?
EMMA What?
JERRY I just-
EMMA I just phoned you this morning, you know, that’s all, because I..
because we’re old friends.. I’ve been up all night.. the whole thing’s
finished.. I suddenly felt I wanted to see you.
JERRY Well, look, I’m happy to see you. I am. I’m sorry.. about..
EMMA Do you remember? I mean, do you remember?
JERRY I remember.
Pause.

20
 EMMA You couldn’t really afford Wessex Grove when we took it, could
you?
JERRY Oh, love finds a way.
EMMA I bought the curtains.
JERRY You found a way.
EMMA Listen, I didn’t want to see you for nostalgia. I mean, what’s the
point? I just wanted to see how you were. Truly. How are you?
JERRY Oh what does it matter?
Pause.
JERRY You didn’t tell Robert about me last night, did you?
EMMA I had to.

Practical Exercise
Bearing in mind what you know from the rest of the play, where in this scene are the characters
telling the truth and where are they wearing a ‘mask’?
What are they really feeling?
Does Emma still love Jerry? Does he love her?
Who initiates the conversation?
Try playing the scene, with and then without ‘masks’.

21
 The balance of power
Alex says that Pinter’s note at the first read-through concerned Scene Five, when
Robert is interrogating Emma after finding Jerry’s letter to her at the Post Office.
Pinter felt that she was too strong (powerful) at that point:
Pause.
EMMA It was from Jerry.
ROBERT Yes. I recognised the handwriting.
Pause.
ROBERT How is he?
EMMA Okay.
ROBERT Good. And Judith?
EMMA Fine.
Pause.
ROBERT What about the kids?
EMMA I don’t think he mentioned them.
ROBERT They’re probably all right then. If they were ill or something he’d
have probably mentioned it.
Pause .
ROBERT Any other news?
EMMA No.
Silence.
ROBERT Are you looking forward to Torcello?
Pause.
ROBERT How many times have we been to Torcello? Twice. I remember
how you loved it, the first time I took you there. You fell in love with
it. That was about ten years ago, wasn’t it? About.. six months after
we were married. Yes. Do you remember? I wonder if you’ll like it
as much tomorrow.
Pause.
ROBERT What do you think of Jerry as a letter writer?
She laughs shortly.
ROBERT You’re trembling. Are you cold?
EMMA No.
(The scene continues)

22
 Practical Exercise
In the above scene, Emma is hiding the fact that Jerry, her lover, has written to her. Later in the
scene, she goes on to confess to Robert.
What is she feeling? What is Robert feeling?
Read the scene, with the ‘masks’, as outlined above.
Read the scene with Emma as strong and Robert weak; then reverse it. How does this affect the
scene? Does it change through the scene?
Act the scene out to show the power balance on each line, perhaps standing higher and lower
than each other to show the changes.

23
 The dot and the pause
Harold Pinter is famous for his use of pauses. It has become part of theatrical
language to refer to a ‘Pinteresque pause’, and Pinter writes them in very carefully
in his scripts, along with … dots, indicating a trailing off, a short pause, and his
other stage directions.
Sir Peter Hall once ran a ‘dot and pause’ rehearsal to pin these down, looking only
at the dots, pauses and silences in each scene – each one has been placed, and
changing them or taking them out can change the whole meaning of a scene.
What is happening in a pause? Why didn’t the character finish their line there?
What might have been said in that pause? What happens as a result of that
pause?
Look at the following example:

From Scene Five

ROBERT He wasn’t the best man at our wedding, was he?
EMMA You know he was.
ROBERT Ah yes. Well, that’s probably when I introduced him to you.
Pause.
ROBERT Was there any message for me, in his letter?
Pause.
ROBERT I mean in the line of business, to do with the world of publishing.
Has he discovered any new and original talent? He’s quite talented
at uncovering talent, old Jerry.
EMMA No message.
ROBERT No message. Not even his love?
Silence.
EMMA We’re lovers.

Practical Exercise
Discuss the pauses and the silence in this short extract. What is happening in each one?
Find other examples in the play where Pinter has been very specific with his stage directions,
either as to what the actors are doing, or with pauses.
Take one of these examples - read or act it out with no pauses. Try again with pauses in different
places or doing something different to the stage directions. How does it affect the scene?

24
 Discussion Point
What is the importance of drinking and music in the script?
AND FINALLY...
‘Essentially, the play asks one big question - if you knew where a move would lead would you still
make it?’
Discuss the meanings of the word betrayal:
• to deliver to an enemy by treachery or disloyalty;
• to be unfaithful in guarding, maintaining or fulfilling;
• to seduce and desert.
Create a list of words associated with betrayal. In groups select one word and create a tableau
(frozen image) of it, then turn it into a scene of betrayal.
Working backwards, show three to five images of the events leading up to this betrayal.

25
 5
section
Betrayal in Performance: The Donmar
Production

The following includes notes from Roger Michell, the director, and Alex Sims,
Resident Assistant Director at the Donmar Warehouse, in week three of the five
week rehearsal process.

What attracts you to Pinter’s work, and why have you chosen to work on
Betrayal?
Roger: I first read Pinter when I was at school, aged about fourteen. We were
shown The Caretaker and it blew my head off. I had never read anything like it.
People spoke to each other in a way that I knew was real and yet in a way that
people in other plays never spoke: it opened my ears as well as my eyes and my
mind. I became fascinated by Pinter. In fact one of the first things I ever directed
were some sketches by Pinter, five of them, one a day in our school assembly for
a week. A bit later, at university, I acted in The Homecoming and The Caretaker. I
can’t imagine modern British drama without Pinter. His influence is everywhere,
from Eastenders to Tom Stoppard to Joe Penhall. He discovered a new way of
listening to other human beings.
I first saw Betrayal in its first production at the National Theatre in 1978. I was 22.
I have seen it three or four times over the years and always wanted a go at it. I
was watching another show at the Donmar last year and Michael Grandage said
he was doing it and would I direct it? To his surprise, and to mine too, I instantly
said “yes”.

Why did Pinter write Betrayal backwards?

Roger: Pinter writes this play backwards and forwards. Four of the scenes go back
and four go forward. So time is an extra character in the play.

How far has Pinter been involved in this production? Has he visited
rehearsals, and, as a director and actor himself, has he given any notes?
Alex: Roger has previously directed Old Times and The Homecoming, and Samuel
West produced a celebration of Pinter’s work in 2006, while he was Artistic
Director of the Sheffield Crucible theatre, so they know each other quite well
already and Pinter trusts them with his work.
The cast and the director all went for lunch with Pinter before rehearsals started,
followed by a closed read-through. He then came to another read-through, when
he gave a couple of notes, and he returned to a run through in the third week of
rehearsals.
An example of a note he gave was in the Venice scene (Scene Five), and this was
around the balance between Emma’s guilt and Robert’s interrogation: he felt, at
that point, that she was too strong.
A really important note from Harold when they first started was ‘Don’t show
what you can conceal’. An example of this is when Robert and Jerry are in the
restaurant (Scene Seven) and Robert is being weird and Jerry can’t work out why.
Jerry then says, ‘How should I know, she’s your wife’, and this is the point when
Robert makes his big decision, okay, I’m going to live with this, because I want
you to be my friend. And then we see Emma… so all of them are masked.

26
 It is interesting how much they have to cover what they are really feeling, for
example, when Emma is pregnant: it could all come crashing down then, they
could all lose everything. The can of worms is opened, and they are infected.
And of course the audience have seen something in the scenes before; they know
something the characters don’t .

What approach has Roger taken to directing the play?

Alex: For the first week, the company sat around a table and read it through
chronologically – i.e. from the end of the script to the beginning. We then created
a timeline on the wall, beginning with Pinter’s birth in 1930, and creating birth
dates for all the characters alongside other events happening in the world. We
also decided the backgrounds for the characters, such as which college Robert
attended at Oxford and which one Jeremy attended at Cambridge, and found
pictures of those colleges and added them. We asked questions about the Torcello
scene – when did he first take you? - and from that worked out that it was the
date when they got married, and that it was for their tenth wedding anniversary.
We also collected pictures of what all the children would look like, and of a
possible Italian restaurant where Jerry and Robert might have met (Scene Seven).
We put a big sheet of lining paper on the floor and marked all the facts on that.
We then read the script through as it is, from 1977 to 1968, and, again working
round the table, we delved into the scenes and made notes, before starting to
put it on its feet in the second week. There was a lot of line analysis, rather than
‘actioning’.
The cast members are very experienced and they came to rehearsals having
already learnt some lines and with a feeling for the characters in the play. They
have been cast very well – each one is exactly right for the place and time of the
play.
We did some improvisation as well: for example, Jerry sends Emma a letter in
response to a letter she sent him first, so Dervla went away and wrote the letter
that Emma would have sent, and then Toby went away and wrote his response as
Jerry.
We tried to get as much information as possible - anything that is in the scene or
just before the scene, but is unseen by us [the audience].

What about the characters’ changing ages? Was that difficult for the actors?
Alex: The actors found it very useful to first read the play chronologically. Their age
in each scene is very important, and how they change: for example, Robert falls
out of love with literature. We also found that the most precious relationship is
actually between the men, more than with Emma.
We have been jumping around scenes since then. The actors are helped by
costume changes, but they don’t change their mannerisms – it is all there in the
language and the playing of it. For example, the last scene is very light, and it is
the only time there is music in the play. This signifies a time when they didn’t have
responsibilities. Also significant in the play is how much alcohol they drink – it is
very specific in the stage directions. It is all down to the mindset of the actors and
it is also all there in the script. It is quite a challenge though.

27
 You mentioned that the men’s friendship is the most important relationship
in the play. Have you discovered anything else during rehearsals?
Alex: One really interesting thing we did was to run a sweepstake on how many
betrayals there are in the play – the current total is running at 52! For example,
in the last scene, the very last stage direction is: ‘They stand still, looking at
each other’, after Jerry grasps her arm. The fact that Emma stays is a betrayal.
When she goes to the bedroom to comb her hair, knowing that Jerry is in there
is a betrayal. Jerry and Emma’s affair is a betrayal. Jerry and Emma getting a flat
together is a betrayal. Robert not telling Jerry about his affairs is a betrayal.
It is a deceptively simple play and there are so many betrayals. Jerry is in the
restaurant with Robert and Robert has just found out that Jerry is having an affair.
Robert hints that he knows, but Jerry doesn’t have a clue. So ‘Scotch on the
rocks? You don’t usually drink Scotch’ is a loaded line.
The betrayals are like a poison seeping into all of them, like a bug – symbolised by
the ‘bug’ that Jerry is ill with. It is a manifestation of the guilt. The memory of the
kitchen is significant, the fact that he remembers the wrong kitchen – is a betrayal.
It is like a canker.
However it is a naturalistic piece – there are no tricks in the script.

What is the design for the production and how was this decision reached?
Alex: The set is minimal: three chairs, a table and a bed, and this is the same in
every scene – the furniture is common to every house. We originally talked about
using curtains as a ‘wipe’ between scenes, with projections of iconic footage
from each year, then Hockney windows projections. But we found that the more
we added, the more it took away, and actually the script is quite bare, so it is now
stripped right down – the curtains are still there as a wipe, with the date on them.
What we didn’t want was to worry whether the audience was getting it or not, so
this helps them with the fact that it is going backwards.

Have you got any advice for the audience when watching the play, especially
for the first time? Anything to watch out for?
Roger: Just listen carefully to what the characters are saying to each other.
Sometimes what they are saying is more clearly expressed in what they don’t
say to each other. Sometimes the gaps or pauses in what they are saying reveal
another truth.
Alex: I would advise the audience to really listen to the script, and to try and work
out when people are saying what they really mean, and when it’s a cover for their
true feelings. It is very rare in the play when the characters are honest with each
other or with themselves. For example, when Emma tells Jeremy she is pregnant,
is she telling the truth, or does she realise he’s not ready? Does she choose at
that moment to say it’s Robert’s baby? What are the secret moments when the
characters choose to conceal the truth? E.g. Emma has a real chance to tell about
the affair, but she doesn’t tell him, she chooses not to tell him at that point – and
then when he does finally find out, it represents four years of lying and betrayal.
Judith is never seen, but she is a brilliant character, and she is having her
friendship with the doctor. It’s all about lies and games. How much is conscious
lying and how much subconscious? How much are they lying to themselves?
It’s that bug I mentioned earlier, the guilt eating away at them, the constant lying,
the constant betrayals.
28
 If you are able to look at the script, it is very interesting to see how accurate and
specific Pinter is. All the pauses and stage directions are there, and the company
have adhered to them because he is absolutely right about where he’s put them.
Ask why that pause is there – is someone thinking: should I speak?
So I’ve been ‘pause monitor’, making sure that no one leaves a pause where there
is no pause written. The rhythm of the play is brilliant and should be trusted.
The silences speak volumes; they are really loaded. People make decisions before
they’ve spoken, or they haven’t committed quite enough – and that pause, while
you’re thinking, can change your life.

29
 6
section
Reading

Primary sources
Betrayal (Harold Pinter: Plays, Faber and Faber Contemporary Classics 1996)
Donmar Warehouse rehearsal copy of Betrayal
Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech
www.haroldpinter.org Harold Pinter’s website, a fund of information about the
man, his work and his life

Bibliography and further reading

The Life and Work of Harold Pinter, Michael Billington (Faber and Faber, London
1996)
About Pinter - the playwright and the work, Mark Batty (Faber and Faber, London,
2005)
The Theatre of the Absurd, Martin Esslin (Penguin Books, 1961)
Various Voices: Poetry, Prose, Politics, 1948 – 1998, Harold Pinter (Faber and
Faber, 1998)
Betrayal, film 1983, starring Ben Kingsley, Jeremy Irons and Patricia Hodge.
Directed by David Hugh Jones.

Appendix

Pinter’s personal life and the link to Betrayal

From 1956 until 1980, Pinter was married to Vivien Merchant, a rep actress whom
he met on tour, probably best known for her performance in the original film Alfie.
Their son, Daniel, was born in 1958. Through the early ‘70s, Merchant appeared
in many of Pinter’s works, most notably The Homecoming on stage (1965) and
screen (1973). The marriage was turbulent and began disintegrating in the mid-
1960s. For seven years, from 1962-69, Pinter was engaged in a clandestine affair
with Joan Bakewell, which informed the play Betrayal (1978). According to his
own programme notes for that play, between 1975 and 1980, he lived with the
historian Lady Antonia Fraser, wife of Sir Hugh Fraser. In 1975, Merchant filed for
divorce. The Frasers’ divorce became final in 1977 and the Pinters’ in 1980. In
1980, Pinter married Antonia Fraser.
Unable to overcome her bitterness and grief at the loss of her husband, Vivien
Merchant died of acute alcoholism in 1983. According to Michael Billington (ibid)
Pinter ‘did everything possible to support’ her until her death and regrets that
he became estranged from their son, Daniel, after their separation and Pinter’s
remarriage.

30
 Pinter stated publicly in several recent interviews that he remains ‘very happy’
in his second marriage and enjoys family life, which includes his six adult step-
children and over twice as many grandchildren, and considers himself ‘a very lucky
man in every respect.’

Book reveals Pinter’s betrayal with Bakewell

Article by Nigel Reynolds, 1996

The playwright Harold Pinter and Joan Bakewell, the television broadcaster once
hailed as “the thinking man’s crumpet”, were lying low yesterday after it was
disclosed that they had had a long, extra-marital affair.
A new biography (by Michael Billington) of the Left-wing playwright reveals that
Pinter’s most autobiographical drama, Betrayal, was based on his seven-year affair
in the 1960s with Miss Bakewell, who was then married. Many believed that
the work had been about the later affair that led to his second marriage, to Lady
Antonia Fraser.
Educated at Cambridge and a presenter of BBC TV’s Late Night Line-Up, Joan was
married to Michael Bakewell, a BBC drama producer and friend of Pinter. Several
people in the theatre world said yesterday that the affair had been a long open
secret…
Mr Billington says Betrayal, first performed at the National Theatre in 1978 and
later made into a film, is a close dramatisation of the Harold Pinter/Joan Bakewell/
Michael Bakewell triangle…Mr Billington says both of them confessed their
affair to him during recent interviews for the biography. Miss Bakewell told him:
“Betrayal is all about my relationship with Harold. It is accurate in its chronology
and its events.”
Mr Billington says it is now clear that the play concerns several acts of betrayal
- not only by the lovers against their respective partners. During the affair, Pinter
himself felt deeply betrayed, claims Mr Billington. He had believed that the affair
was secret but discovered that Mr Bakewell had known about it for two years.
Writing the play was Pinter’s way of exorcising this act of treachery, Mr Billington
suggests. Both Bakewells said they felt betrayed when the play appeared. “It’s
like a diary and so I was upset when I first read it,” Miss Bakewell said. She has,
however, forgiven. She told Mr Billington: “Harold and I are very fond of each
other and have terrific lunches. Now when I see the play I feel it’s a brilliant,
convoluted piece of writing, even if it lacks the real characters of the people
involved.”
Mr Billington said yesterday that Pinter had recently read proofs of his book. The
only objection he had raised was the suggestion that he was indignant at Mr
Bakewell’s knowing silence.
Pinter was unavailable for comment yesterday.

31
 Article by Kate Kellaway, Sunday September 24th 2000 in the
Observer

Pinter is 70. (Pause for applause)

As a young man he was ‘a charismatic front runner’, a radical with his own unique
vision. Now, more than 40 years after The Birthday Party, even his old pals still
can’t work him out.
There has always been a Harold Pinter who wanted to escape detection: as a
young actor, he changed his name to David Baron. His first poem was published
under the semi-false name of Pinta. In his plays, his characters are anything but
known. They are often hailed as people they may - or may not - actually be. Even
the most ordinary identities are open to doubt. On 10 October, Harold Pinter will
turn 70. To all intents and purpose, he is a ‘recognised’ figure. But do we know
who he is? Or has he, for 50 years, succeeded in giving us the slip? Should we still
be asking the question that Mick drops with casual force at the end of the first act
of The Caretaker: ‘What’s the game?’
There will be a birthday party for Pinter on 9 October, hosted by Faber, his
publishers. The invitation stipulates ‘no presents’. Yet I like to imagine that Pinter
might be given, as Stanley is in The Birthday Party, a drum to unwrap. And
then, like Stanley, he could beat it with that mixture of anger, concentration and
panache that we have come to see as Pinteresque. But even in the absence
of any drum, it is clear that there will be no shortage of people volunteering to
blow Pinter’s trumpet for him. All this week, I feel I have been attending a surreal
party for Pinter, conducted by telephone, talking to friends, writers, actors and
directors. But the extraordinary thing is that everyone has wanted to celebrate
something different. And while almost no one has hesitated to define the adjective

32
 ‘Pinteresque’, no definition has been the same. Indeed, there is so much energy in
the adjective, it should at once, I think, be promoted to become a verb.
David Hare had a brilliant stab at trying to describe Pinter’s ‘game’. He claims he
is ‘heretical’ about Pinter. He suggests that Pinter explodes ‘European, existential
ideas in a working-class setting’. It is this which ‘leads to subsequent humour’.
Hare goes further, placing Pinter above Beckett. ‘I think he is one of the few
disciples superior to the master, rooting Beckett in a real social world instead of
an arid limbo.’ As a skittish - but serious - postscript, he says he thinks that Monty
Python is inspired by Pinter; the kerchiefed woman in The Room could, with a
tweak or two, be played by Eric Idle….
…Peter Hall won’t have any truck with the idea of an enigma that cannot be
solved. He speaks as someone who has devoted a life to solving Pinteresque
riddles and is not going to be deprived of the right to feel he has done so. He
believes that ‘structure’ is the key to understanding the plays and that Pinter’s
imitators make the fatal mistake of allowing incompletely imagined situations
to masquerade as mystery. Not that Hall is being reductive in any way: ‘Pinter
brought poetry back into the theatre; he said things by the unsaid. People make
jokes about his pauses, but the pauses are as eloquent as the lines.’
Joan Bakewell reminds us of the overwhelming presence in the plays of ‘menace
- the sense of a threat to existing relationships... illuminated by flashes of blazing
comedy’. For Richard Eyre, he is also ‘extraordinarily fresh and prescient’. For
Ian McDiarmid, artistic director of the Almeida, he is a ‘brilliant compressionist’.
David Leveaux, director of No Man’s Land, Betrayal and Moonlight at the Almeida,
settles for one word to describe the Pinteresque: ‘Suddenness’.
Pinter is recognisable in all these definitions - and yet not contained by any of
them. Perhaps it is Lenny’s question in The Homecoming that needs answering
next: ‘In other words, apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?’
Pinter himself seems somewhere between the two. Earlier this year, the Almeida
put on a double bill of his first play, The Room (1957), and his last, Celebration -
directed by Pinter himself. There was an uncanny family likeness. Both took place
in one room. ln each, cabin fever combined with a terror of the outside….
...Pinter emerges as a director who makes life fun for actors, and an actor who
is willing, as David Leveaux says, to be directed - even when the play is his own.
He is a passionate cricketer, too. The actor Roger Lloyd Pack, who played in the
Gaieties team of which Pinter was captain, remembers Pinter’s delight in the
details of the sport - ‘the weather, the psychological effects, what is correct and
what isn’t, where your elbow is, how your stance is.’ And Lloyd Pack does not
think it fanciful to draw an analogy between Pinter’s writing and cricket. ‘In both,
there is a loving attention to detail and a formality, a passion and correctness - the
same concentration.’ But he admits that Pinter was ‘not a good loser. He is very
competitive.’
There is, famously, another side to Pinter’s character. As Michael Frayn amusingly
puts it: ‘He has a notoriously short fuse and easily leaps to the conclusion, in the
middle of a conversation about something else, that one is insufficiently serious
about the evils of US foreign policy in Central America. But his fury is usually as
short as his fuse, and two minutes after he has launched into you, he is likely
to put his arm around you and make it up.’ Peter Hall suggests that he is a
‘strange combination of a thin skin and justifiable arrogance. He is easily hurt and
misunderstood.’ And there is another word that keeps coming up: ‘power’. David

33
 Hare argues that Pinter is a ‘poet of power. It is his basic currency and that is why
he is sometimes an uncomfortable person to meet.’..
…Only Michael Frayn and Tom Stoppard baulked at trying to define Pinter’s
essence. Stoppard said he has never been able to understand how Pinter does
what he does. As a young man, seeing Rattigan, Osborne or Wesker, he used to
think: ‘I could do that myself, if only I was clever enough.’ But in 1959, when he
first saw The Birthday Party, he realised he could never copy Pinter. ‘I couldn’t see
how it was done.’ Nowadays, he feels that everything has been said about Harold
Pinter... everything and nothing. In other words: the game is not up.

A birthday card from his friends

‘He was Pinter from the beginning. As a nameless dramatist once said: I
feel sorry for Harold. Other people can choose between comedy and tragedy,
Pinter always has to write a Pinter play..’
Peter Hall

‘His own certainty about his talent is vindicated 100 per cent. There is no
one who doesn’t admire him.’
David Hare

‘Pinter writes from his unconscious to the page. The door then shuts and
he can only dimly remember his way back. He writes and then he becomes
aware.’
David Leveaux

‘One of the things about Betrayal is how many people recognise themselves
in it.’
Joan Bakewell

‘Mature ladies who have got their lives and their marriages still talk of him
with special affection.’
Henry Woolf on Pinter’s former girlfriends

‘I think people will be going to Pinter’s plays in 100 years time. He has such
an individual voice; it may move in and out of focus but it won’t disappear.’
Richard Eyre

‘At the Almeida in the offices above the rehearsal room we take our shoes
off. Pinter is in the business of trying to create silences. We understand that
perfectly.’
Ian McDiarmid
34
 ‘Dramatic suspense is to do with the flow of information to the audience.
Pinter achieves this in a way that is unique to himself.’
Tom Stoppard

‘He’s not dead is he? Oh good. Haven’t we been here before? When Pinter
turned 50 I was asked to say something and couldn’t think of anything.
Later I thought there should be a two-minute silence.’
Alan Bennett

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 About the Donmar Warehouse
a special insight into the theatre

The Donmar Warehouse is an intimate

(not for profit) 251 seat theatre located
in the heart of London’s West End. The
theatre attracts almost 100,000 people to
its productions a year. Since 1992, under
the Artistic Direction of Michael Grandage
and his predecessor, Sam Mendes, the
theatre has presented some of London’s
most memorable theatrical experiences as
well as garnered critical acclaim at home
and abroad. With a diverse artistic policy
that includes new writing, contemporary
reappraising of European classics, British
and American drama and music theatre, the
Donmar has created a reputation for artistic
excellence over the last 12 years and has
won 25 Olivier Awards, 12 Critics’ Circle
Awards, 10 Evening Standard Awards and
10 Tony Awards for Broadway transfers.

For more information about the Donmar’s

education activities, please contact:
Aimee Barnett
Development Department
Donmar Warehouse
41 Earlham Street
London WC2H 9LX
T: 020 7845 5816
F: 020 7240 4878
E: abarnett@donmarwarehouse.com

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