Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2013 6:56 pm
In Betrayal, Daniel Craig And Rachel Weisz Struggle With The Torments Of Memory
How much control do you have over your memories? Or do they already control you? In the drama Betrayal, playwright Harold Pinter’s unique blend of women-hating and alcoholism help bring such questions to light. The drama, which stars real-life couple Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz, is one of Pinter’s ‘memory plays.’ Similar to No Man’s Land, the play is told backwards, leaving the audience to piece it together once the curtain falls.
The central question of Betrayal revolves around whether we’re able to go on living, despite the mistakes we made in the past. The answer, at least for Rachel Weisz’s Emma, is a definitive ‘no.’
Pinter, the Nobel Prize-winning playwright who died in 2008, loves to make his characters despicable. He wrote Betrayal in 1977, inspired by his affair with BBC news anchor Joan Bakewell while married to actress Vivien Merchant. The son of a Jewish tailor, the young Pinter was relocated during the Blitz to the English countryside. The effect was dramatic; his biographer Michael Billington writes that Pinter’s departure from his parents created memories of “profound loneliness, bewilderment, separation, and loss: themes that are all in his works.”
He excels in highlighting human ambiguity and cruelty, and the driving loneliness and depression that fuel it. His writing, dripping with uncomfortable pauses and second-guesses, feels remarkably British in its stiffness. Perhaps the greatest flaw with Mike Nichols’ production is the ignorance of this fact. On stage, the actors talk with each other, and over each other, afraid to let silence wash over their pretty faces. And Nichols (who won 10 Tonys for talky plays like The Odd Couple and Death of a Salesman) doesn’t seem to get it. The gaps between dialogues are half of Pinter’s brilliance—he wants his characters to squirm, unable to grasp the right thing to say.
The play begins in 1977, two years after the end of Jerry (Rafe Spall) and Emma’s affair. Jerry learns that Emma told her husband–and his best friend–Robert (Daniel Craig, with a horrible 70s shag cut) of the affair years before it ended. This upsets Jerry—not the discovery of the affair, but rather that he no longer has a secret to keep. The next scene, wherein he confronts Robert, Jerry can’t comprehend the nature of their continuing friendship. Why didn’t Robert tell him he knew? Why would he ignore the affair between his best friend and his wife? On the surface, Robert explains he doesn’t give a shit who his wife sleeps with; he’s sleeping with other women, so who cares? But Jerry does care, and deeply.
As the play’s only woman, Weisz has a difficult task of injecting the impulsive Emma with humanity and humor. Her experience as a film actress complements the role, using subtle voice and movement changes to demonstrate Emma’s crumbling psyche. The performance is remarkably restrained, with Weisz often curling herself up to the smallest possible shape, shrinking around the males in spite of herself. Daniel Craig, as the sneering chauvinist Robert, doesn’t have much to do. However, he has some of the play’s greatest and funniest lines, and Craig clearly relishes the role.
Betrayal is a good play, and a thoughtful one. A feeling of unease pervades the drama, and one can’t be sure why. The characters are certainly trapped—Ian MacNeil’s stage design literally boxes the actors in, and doesn’t let them go. Though Nichols ignores the British tightness inherent in Pinter’s work, the actors still flesh out these horrid characters, using the cramped space to buffer themselves from feeling anything real.
For a play this powerful, however, it’s a true shame it isn’t more accessible. As a theater-goer under the age of 85, I was clearly in the minority at the Barrymore Theater. And with tickets as expensive as mopeds, you may come expecting a flawless experience. Unfortunately, I found myself sitting next to a gentleman with a broken hearing aid, the static feedback played in constant tandem with the actors’ lines. Talk about betrayal.
Read more: In Betrayal, Daniel Craig And Rachel Weisz Struggle With The Torments Of Memory · NYU Local http://nyulocal.com/on-campus/2013/12/0 ... z2mXAUwptN
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
How much control do you have over your memories? Or do they already control you? In the drama Betrayal, playwright Harold Pinter’s unique blend of women-hating and alcoholism help bring such questions to light. The drama, which stars real-life couple Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz, is one of Pinter’s ‘memory plays.’ Similar to No Man’s Land, the play is told backwards, leaving the audience to piece it together once the curtain falls.
The central question of Betrayal revolves around whether we’re able to go on living, despite the mistakes we made in the past. The answer, at least for Rachel Weisz’s Emma, is a definitive ‘no.’
Pinter, the Nobel Prize-winning playwright who died in 2008, loves to make his characters despicable. He wrote Betrayal in 1977, inspired by his affair with BBC news anchor Joan Bakewell while married to actress Vivien Merchant. The son of a Jewish tailor, the young Pinter was relocated during the Blitz to the English countryside. The effect was dramatic; his biographer Michael Billington writes that Pinter’s departure from his parents created memories of “profound loneliness, bewilderment, separation, and loss: themes that are all in his works.”
He excels in highlighting human ambiguity and cruelty, and the driving loneliness and depression that fuel it. His writing, dripping with uncomfortable pauses and second-guesses, feels remarkably British in its stiffness. Perhaps the greatest flaw with Mike Nichols’ production is the ignorance of this fact. On stage, the actors talk with each other, and over each other, afraid to let silence wash over their pretty faces. And Nichols (who won 10 Tonys for talky plays like The Odd Couple and Death of a Salesman) doesn’t seem to get it. The gaps between dialogues are half of Pinter’s brilliance—he wants his characters to squirm, unable to grasp the right thing to say.
The play begins in 1977, two years after the end of Jerry (Rafe Spall) and Emma’s affair. Jerry learns that Emma told her husband–and his best friend–Robert (Daniel Craig, with a horrible 70s shag cut) of the affair years before it ended. This upsets Jerry—not the discovery of the affair, but rather that he no longer has a secret to keep. The next scene, wherein he confronts Robert, Jerry can’t comprehend the nature of their continuing friendship. Why didn’t Robert tell him he knew? Why would he ignore the affair between his best friend and his wife? On the surface, Robert explains he doesn’t give a shit who his wife sleeps with; he’s sleeping with other women, so who cares? But Jerry does care, and deeply.
As the play’s only woman, Weisz has a difficult task of injecting the impulsive Emma with humanity and humor. Her experience as a film actress complements the role, using subtle voice and movement changes to demonstrate Emma’s crumbling psyche. The performance is remarkably restrained, with Weisz often curling herself up to the smallest possible shape, shrinking around the males in spite of herself. Daniel Craig, as the sneering chauvinist Robert, doesn’t have much to do. However, he has some of the play’s greatest and funniest lines, and Craig clearly relishes the role.
Betrayal is a good play, and a thoughtful one. A feeling of unease pervades the drama, and one can’t be sure why. The characters are certainly trapped—Ian MacNeil’s stage design literally boxes the actors in, and doesn’t let them go. Though Nichols ignores the British tightness inherent in Pinter’s work, the actors still flesh out these horrid characters, using the cramped space to buffer themselves from feeling anything real.
For a play this powerful, however, it’s a true shame it isn’t more accessible. As a theater-goer under the age of 85, I was clearly in the minority at the Barrymore Theater. And with tickets as expensive as mopeds, you may come expecting a flawless experience. Unfortunately, I found myself sitting next to a gentleman with a broken hearing aid, the static feedback played in constant tandem with the actors’ lines. Talk about betrayal.
Read more: In Betrayal, Daniel Craig And Rachel Weisz Struggle With The Torments Of Memory · NYU Local http://nyulocal.com/on-campus/2013/12/0 ... z2mXAUwptN
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution