Betrayal by Harold Pinter Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Betrayal
Book Review: Been there, played that.
Summary: 2 Stars
I performed Scene 8 from "Betrayal" in a theater class, and read the rest of the play in order to form a character analysis of Emma. I found the play intersting, but slightly odd. Some of the wording made no sense, and there were times when the references seemed out of place and just in there for laughs. The play itself was an old idea broadcast in a new way-backwards. It left me feeling bittersweet as I saw how it ended, and then saw how sweetly it started. I recommend the play for its difference in story telling, but I'm not so thrilled with it that I would insist you see a showing. It really seems to come down to the tastes of the person. This one wasn't really my taste.Book Review: Bingo
Summary: 4 Stars
Sometimes you hit a triple but everyone remembers it as a homer. Pinter has this sort of luck. "Betrayal" is a good play, don't get me wrong. It is somewhat worrying to me that theatre-goers see this as a great play. Great? To be compared to, say, "Hamlet"? It's a good play. The backward plot device is clever and useful and fun. It's delicious in that the betrayal is all done in that wonderful English fashion of brittle humor, lots of contained pain, and no passion. It's all done in exquisitely good taste. Razor burns, not gouged eye-balls. Pinter, who began his career putting the lower-middle class on stage, with their "cuppa" teas and bad breath, has moved here into the upper-middle class, with their Italian wines and weekends to France. Pinter is one of the most upwardly mobile playwrights in theater history. Refinement is as worthy a subject, surely, as degradation, he seems to be saying and, by golly, I guess he's right.Book Review: DANGEROUS CURVES AHEAD!
Summary: 5 Stars
DO YOU THINK BOY BABIES ARE WORSE THAN GIRL BABIES OR DO YOU THINK GIRL BABIES ARE WORSE THAN BOY BABIES? EVERYBODY AWAYS TALKS ABOUT BOY BABIES. THAT THEY HAVE TO LEAVE THE WOMB AND THEN HAVE BIRTH ANXIETY. RIGHT? If I was a man, and having an affair with my best friends wife, I'd probably say the same thing. This novel has an interesting premise - How can you nurture an affair and friendship at the sametime? All the while destroying both? In the STRANGER THAN TRUE category, this authors wife divorced him a few years ago when she learned he was having an affair with her best friend for the past twenty-five years. Does life imitate art, or does art imitate life? You be the judge.Book Review: Ionesco would be proud
Summary: 5 Stars
Part of a collection of Harold Pinter's works, this is a comedy of sexual manners in which Pinter captures the psyche's sly manoeuvres for self-respect with sardonic forgiveness. Written in 1978 by the author of "The Caretaker", "The Lover", "The Homecoming" and "The Birthday Party". This is a great read for lovers of the modern stage and a must for any Pinter collector.Book Review: One of Pinter's strongest plays, betrayal in all its forms
Summary: 5 Stars
One of Harold Pinter's most ambitious undertakings, his 1978 play BETRAYAL ranks among his finest works. Often called a sly comedy of sexual manners, BETRAYAL encompasses much more than just adultery.BETRAYAL has only three main characters (plus a waiter in a single scene). There is Jerry and Emma, who years before had an affair, and Emma's husband Robert, who happens to be Jerry's best friend and business partner. Pinter ingeniously has the play occur in reverse chronological order, so that it begins with a meeting between Jerry and Emma in 1977, years after their affair, and it ends with a shocking scene from 1968. The ending gives BETRAYAL a great deal of reread value, as one can go back through the play and apply the secret revealed in its final moments.
While adultery is the most evident theme of the play, it is about other forms of betrayal: how we betray our friends, betray our spouses by permitting them to break the bonds of marriage, and how our words and actions betray the secrets we strive to hide. Pinter's usual theme of the unknowability of our lifelong partners is even more strongly shown here than in other plays.
BETRAYAL is an excellent play for anyone who likes the work of Harold Pinter. Even if you became interested in the playwright's work through his late political plays like "The New World Order" and "Party Time", this more "traditional" work will excite.
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