Betrayal

“Pinter’s towering masterpiece. Astounding. Electrifying power.” — The Independent

Devanaughn Theatre stunned Boston audiences this fall as they began their third ambitious season exploring language, memory, fidelity, and identity. With critically acclaimed productions of Patrick Marber’s Closer and Sam Shepard’s Simpatico now in their successful history, the next provocative work is their 14th play: 2005 Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter’s mesmerizing Betrayal.

Exquisitely simple in form, the story moves back in time chronicling the seven-year adulterous love affair between a woman and her husband’s best friend. The show features Boston’s veteran actors Rob O’Dwyer, Mark Hessler, Michael Haddad, and co-founder of The Devanaughn, Rose Carlson. Don’t miss this stunning portrayal of a beautiful Pinter classic as you’ve never seen it before! Pinter’s Betrayal is famous for dramatizing the story of an affair in a counter-clockwise direction. Move beyond this compelling framework and Betrayal is a master-class in language and subtext. Full of cryptic small talk, ambiguous tension-filled pauses, and malingering menace, Pinter’s poetic dialogue disguises a deeper conflict between characters, where the victim is never quite sure that the antagonist is his or her enemy. In a world where there is no certainty of memory and no absolute truth, Pinter explores betrayal in all its varied faces, weaving an intricate and complex web of lies and deceit within a seemingly simple plotline in modern day London.

The play has stunned audiences for 25 years because it is so easily accessible, translating for us our own world where charm can be possessive, concern can contain a hidden mockery, and even genuine love can be a violation. One of the play’s most intriguing qualities and a cornerstone of director Dani Duggan’s vision for the piece is the unwrapping of the rhythm and structure of Pinter’s language. The veneer of everyday conversation laid on top of an under-text rich in unspoken intentions and missed connections. Pinter has taken a triangular love story and catapulted it into a universal discourse on human communication. The unspoken language resonates not only within the characters on stage but with each audience member as Pinter prescribes that “audiences must be able to construct their own view of Past.”

For Devanaughn’s production the lyrical language of the spoken and unspoken text will be explored through music as well. Composer Mark Warhol has written an original score for the show. A professional solo clarinet player will perform live each night on a Bb bass clarinet, A clarinet, Bb clarinet and Eb clarinet. The pitch moves up as a counter-point to Pinter’s reverse chronological order of the story.

Box Office Hours: One hour prior to curtain.

Group Sales Number: 617-247-9777, x. 1

Contains adult themes.