Theatre in Review: Betrayal (Ethel Barrymore Theatre)There's a great old Mike Nichols and Elaine May sketch called "Adultery," the joke of it based on the idea that people in different countries break the sixth commandment in different ways. The Americans, of course, are so guilt-ridden that they can barely make it to the bed. The French couple is vexed because each of them forgot to ask along the women's husband; they decide to go ahead, but, as the man says, "It won't be the same without Georges!" The English couple, on the other hand, are so busy making social chitchat ("I don't think I've ever seen anyone as fat as Piggy.") and admiring the woman's hat that you wonder if adultery is in the offing at all. This suspicion is confirmed at the end of the sketch, when the man, looking tenderly at his lover, asks her if, when the door is locked and they are alone, "Could I try on your hat?" The memory is relevant because, as the world knows, Nichols has staged a Broadway revival of Harold Pinter's Betrayal, starring Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, and Rafe Spall. It is, in many ways, an accomplished production -- well-spoken, full of nuance, loaded with character-revealing details. And yet, for all the good work plainly on display, Nichols and company somehow bypass the terrible anguish at the core of Pinter's drama. It looks like Betrayal, and it sounds like Betrayal, but really it's "Adultery," the nightclub sketch. Among Pinter's works, Betrayal is often patronized, in part because it seems to allude to his extramarital affairs with the historian (later his wife) Antonia Fraser and/or the television presenter Joan Bakewell. But it may also be a little too explicit for the taste of many Pinter fans. Plays like The Birthday Party and The Homecoming are essentially mysterious; we can never quite grasp the menace that lurks inside the blandest remark. In Betrayal, however, we usually know exactly what the characters are getting at because we've seen them dig their own graves over the course of a decade. By beginning at the end of the years-long affair of Emma and Jerry and moving backward in time to the moment when he first passionately throws himself at her -- an event witnessed, and thoroughly misconstrued, by Emma's husband, Robert -- we are in the position of seeing when each bit of deception -- and there are many -- was committed. The further back we go, the more everyone is revealed as acting in bad faith, holding back the truth, or disregarding it altogether, for reasons of temperament as much as morality or kindness. For a long time, the center holds, but there is a terrible price to pay: Passion, delight, and any kind of real feeling end up ensnared in a net of lies, leaving all three characters alone, spent, emptied of joy. Indeed, as we watch Robert, Emma, and Jerry engage in their intricate games of emotional chess, a marriage and a close friendship are being destroyed. This really becomes apparent in the fourth scene, set in Robert and Emma's flat. Both are at home when Jerry drops in for a drink. Their conversation is thoroughly trivial to the casual observer but hair-raising to us, who by this point understand that Robert knows full well that Emma and Jerry are sleeping with each other. We also know that both the affair and Robert and Emma's marriage are doomed. And we know that Robert is deceiving Emma with any number of women. The scene should bristle with unspoken tensions, but, under Nichols' guidance, the overall feeling is one of a rather studied urbanity. He makes sure we see each little lie slipping into place, but the impact is surprisingly lacking. The scene ends with a shocking gesture -- after Jerry leaves, Robert all but forces himself on Emma, who frantically returns his ardor -- that here seems out of place. We've been aware of the crosscurrents among all three, but the tension that would make Robert and Emma rush to find instant release in sex is missing. There's a fair amount of drama in the next scene, set in Venice a year earlier, in which Robert bullies Emma into admitting the affair, but a subsequent lunch encounter for Robert and Jerry, which should vibrate with Robert's unspoken knowledge of his best friend's Betrayal, falls flat, thanks to Craig's overplaying. He should be carefully needling Jerry throughout the meal; instead, he behaves so boorishly -- pouring wine into his glass by the gallon and sneering his lines -- that Jerry's underplayed response makes no sense. By the penultimate scene, in which Jerry and Emma meet in the flat reserved for their lovemaking, and he confesses he suspects his wife of infidelity and she admits to being pregnant -- by Robert -- the audience should be feeling something akin to high anxiety. Is anyone to be trusted? Is there such a thing as candor in this privileged world? Or is everyone always, always acting in his or her selfish interest? Even this brilliantly mordant scene is played to little effect. On some level, an all-important sense of chemistry is absent. Craig, with his chiseled-Neanderthal features and brutish air, is strange casting for an Oxbridge graduate who smoothly transitioned into the posh world of publishing. (A life of crime would seem to be the more likely choice for him.) Still, he alone among the three leads hints at the play's submerged emotions even if he doesn't do so consistently. Weisz has a nice way of tightly compressing her lips and looking away when her Emma doesn't want to speak the awful truth, but in scene after scene, she seems to be skating on the surface of things. Spall captures Jerry's youthful ardor and his unwillingness to admit to any unpleasantness, even when it is plain to see that the affair is played out, but in some of his scenes with Weisz, he seems to be batting their dialogue back and forth for the amusement of it, just as Nichols and May did half a century ago. Nichols has also seen to it that his three stars have a reasonably slick production. Given a script with half a dozen locations, Ian MacNeil, the set designer, flies in various translucent flats, on which the video designer, Finn Ross, can project the year; each scene is filled out with spare arrangements of furniture. It's a sleek, fast-moving solution, even if the walls often tremble as a character closes a door behind him or her. There is no costume designer with a better eye for character and period than Ann Roth and she is at her best here, especially in tracing Emma's evolution from an impulsive young woman to a rather chic, if buttoned up, businesswoman. Brian MacDevitt's lighting and Scott Lehrer's sound (which help to deliver James Murphy's melancholy piano and string arrangements) are both solid. As the lies pile up and the action moves closer and closer to the flashpoint when passion trumps good sense, sending three lives into permanent disarray, we should feel a constantly rising sense of tension, an awareness of how quickly the happiest life can seemingly go off the rails. But when we got to the final scene at the Barrymore, my only thought was, Are we there already? This Betrayal is only a sketch about adultery; it sometimes amuses, but it never wounds.--David Barbour 
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