Pinter’s “Betrayal” in Rome

Do you like English language and literacy? Are you still getting over the sorrow for the closedown of the Metropolitan, one of the few cinemas in Rome in which movies in original language ran? Some good news may help. In the next weekend one should take the chance to watch a fair revival of the Harold Pinter’s play “Betrayal” (1978) in original version, without a flight to London. Surprise!

The play is a bit complicated but very interesting: dialogues are reduced to the very essential and you had to get ready to prompt exchanges, sharping jokes and repeated lies between Emma and her lover Jerry, Emma and her husband Robert and the two men, actually close friend. The scenes are like wide-angle photographs taken from the story’s course. The action is mostly contained, the actors hardly ever staying otherwise than standing still one-on-one stiffly. The only exception is the breezy and relaxed Italian waiter appearing in scene seven. Probably it is no coincidence that the waiter is so likable, having Pinter used to support himself as a waiter during his acting career.

The core idea, though, is that the story go backward, moving from 1977, two years after Emma and Jerry’s affair ended, to 1968 when, at the end of a party, it began. The three main actors are quite credible becoming younger and rebirthing dead enthusiasms, with only a thing staying still: the habit of hold a glass every time and drink from scene one to scene nine. Considering that in the last scene only Jerry is drunk, what have Emma and Robert been really drinking?

Sandra Paternostro (Emma)

Rinaldo Rocco (Jerry)

Gianpiero Cognoli (Robert)

Ferdinando Schiavone (Waiter)

Directed by Donnacadh O’Briain

Next shows: Thursday 17 ^th Friday 18th and Saturday 19 ^th March 2011, 9 pm; Sunday 20 ^th 5:30 pm

Teatro dell’Orologio, v. de' Filippini, 17/A, tel 349 6703331