The Goodman Theater’s star-cast production of Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” starts off with an exciting crispness.
We meet Brits Emma (Helen Hunt) and Jerry (Robert Sean Leonard) at a London pub. They catch up about their families. They reminisce, fondly but gingerly, about their long, passionate affair that ended two years earlier. Deep affection lingers, evident just beneath the surface in Pinter’s famously ripe pauses. The expert exposition turns effectively into a plot turn: The past affair has been outed to Emma’s husband and Jerry’s longtime best friend Robert.
The second scene, the most entertaining of the evening, takes place later that day. Jerry has invited Robert (Ian Barford) over to his house to discuss the affair. His reaction isn’t what Jerry expected, but alpha male Robert — the buyer book publisher to Jerry’s seller agent — may be putting on this steely nonchalance. The complicated conversation has palpable layers pierced through with sharp humor.
And then the scenes start going back in time, tracing the key moments in this 75-minute pas-de-trois, which opened Monday night at the Loop theater.
In honor of the late Mr. Pinter, let’s pause.
There’s much to discuss here about experiencing this “Betrayal.” There’s the play itself, with its complex, reverse-chronological structure. There’s the celebrity casting, which ultimately, I’m sorry to say, feels off for a variety of reasons despite the actors’ excellence in craft. There’s the slick designs and evocative transitions in Goodman artistic director Susan Booth’s staging.
Ultimately, though, this is a production that loses more and more steam as it continues.
“Betrayal” is Pinter’s most accessible work, in that you fundamentally always know what’s happening — where you are and the characters’ relationships with each other. Many of Pinter’s plays, such as “The Birthday Party” and “The Homecoming,” contain more mystery and menace. Those qualities exist in “Betrayal,” but they blend in with the recognizable details of the sophisticated English bourgeoisie. It’s a different angle from which the Nobel Prize winner explores some of his favorite obsessions: human deception, power relationships, sexual undertows, memory, and the nature of language.
By moving backward in time, Pinter plays with dramatic irony, in which the audience knows more than the characters — sometimes just one of the characters, sometimes all. We are better equipped to interpret the pauses, as we often know when characters are lying.
But here those pauses feel too short, or at least too one-dimensional, as this show proceeds. We don’t get to revel — theatrically, that is — in the betrayals; instead, we just kind of observe them. And we don’t experience sufficiently rich mystery in the deeper emotions that remain masked in politesse.
Part of this simply stems from the casting. Here’s the thing about television and film stars — up close and personal as the camera always is, they emanate characteristics without needing to project them. Both Hunt, who in the same year won both the Oscar for “As Good as It Gets” and the Emmy for “Mad About You,” and Leonard, who first became famous for “Dead Poets Society” and then spent many years on the medical drama “House,” emanate niceness. That’s wonderful — they are so very, very likable without needing to try to be.
But Pinter didn’t write likable characters. And, in this case, playing betrayers who cover up their betrayals, Hunt and Leonard cover up so well that they both come off as innocents, particularly opposite a near-malevolent version of Robert in Barford’s take.
These actors are also nearly 20 years older than the characters. It doesn’t present too much of a problem at first, but it does as the characters get nearly 10 years younger. Robert’s pomposity might come off as confidence, even wicked wit, in a younger man, but feels just cranky in an older one. And as we move towards the beginning of Emma and Jerry’s romance, the irresistibility of Jerry’s attraction possesses a sense of exhaustion at holding back temptation, more foolhardy than fateful, and Hunt seems to relinquish Emma’s agency.
The production remains delightful to look at. The screens and depth of Neil Patel’s set succeed in creating a patina of haziness. In between scenes, Rasean Davonte Johnson’s elegant black and white projections convey a home-movie nostalgia, complemented with gentle music from Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen.
The peacefulness is supposed to contrast with the play’s roiling undercurrents of hurtful human interactions, but these atmospherics end up winning.
This “Betrayal” has too much gentility, not enough venom.