Less flare, more words unsaid: Repertory Philippines’ production of Harold Pinter’s ‘Betrayal’

“I wanted to explore this play from a Filipino-British woman’s gaze against the landscape of gender inequality and male competitive rivalry,” said Lirio. “Thus, we begin the play in her art gallery, a physical space belonging to her that transforms in time and place.”

With white walls, floors, and boxes that become a desk, counter, bar, chair, and more, audiences can concentrate on the colours each character brings, set against the backdrop of Pacita Abad’s artwork, which was generously lent by her family and Silverlens Galleries.

With less flare and unsaid words, this minimalist REP production leaned into Pinter’s richness in subtext and countertext—making treachery, heartache, regrets, guilt, wrath, and hope truly deafening in each silent pause. The production’s subtlety in the reimagined world-building might confuse the inattentive audience but that’s what made it worth watching and dissecting.

As intricate as the colours, shapes, and patterns of Abad’s large masterpiece towering over the stage, the secrets unravel as the scene progresses in reverse. The more we know about the affair, the less we see Emma resentful, Jerry anxious, and Robert stoic.

Another ingenious addition to Pinter’s work was also the improvised first scene which transitions the preset where we see the gallery adorned with stone sculptures somewhat reminiscent of Impy Pilapil’s work and then into an exhibition of Abad’s works where the first scene opens. It may seem just choreographed movements and changing of the sets but it also sets the tone of the play, bringing you to a less solid and phallic world and into the hands of Emma. Is it to empathise with her, now knowing her husband does not have an ounce of love anymore for her and has been seeing other women for a long time now? Is it to understand her decision from years ago to enter into an affair with her husband’s best friend? Is it to tell her she was wrong? The answer is left to the audience, which by now sees Emma already resolved and has conceded that her marriage had long ended.

“Pinter’s art was his rhetoric. The poetry in his prose—from linguistic nonsense to elegant, highly compressed stage poetry,” Lirio said. “For this play, part of the fun was discovering the text. We did a deep dive into and rigorous text scansion for ‘Pinterese’ to excavate action and subtext as well as for poetic and rhetoric devices to navigate Pinter’s prose, particularly, the speeches.”

Read also: Why do gender-based violence and domestic abuse still exist?

In Betrayal, the characters Robert and Jerry were at the apex of their academic lives during their time at Cambridge and Oxford, when they were both editors of their respective poetry magazines and publications. “Having Filipino-looking people as the physical representation, I believe, is compelling,” Lirio said. However, because of its subdued edits and utmost respect for the material, the Filipino roots are somewhat absent in the way the lines were delivered. One might expect the three characters to face complications with their Catholic upbringing, but they didn’t. Instead, we see them finding their personal motivations for their actions as common and justified especially in a mix of the Seventies mindset and 21st century world—which someone from a conservative Filipino family would never imagine.

“By design, I cast the play with much younger actors,” explained Lirio. “I wanted to explore Emma and Robert’s marriage as if their relationship began when they were 20, and investigate what happened to their 13-year marriage in their mid-30s. I also wanted to soundcheck how the themes of the play—traditionally told by white British actors in their mid-40s—would resonate with the younger Millennial/Generation Y group in Manila.”

Like appreciating a painting, REP’s Betrayal invites audiences to an intimate look at love—of self and others—and its hidden details one would discover with gratification and shock. And despite one may find the situation and its repercussions abstract, there is something beneath its colours and shapes that reflect our being—just biding its time to surface.

Repertory Philippines’s production of Betrayal runs until March 16 at the Carlos P Romulo Auditorium, RCBC Plaza, Makati

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