Betrayal is a new departure & a bold one... Pinter has found a way of making memory active & dramatic giving an audience the experience of the minds accelerating momentum as it pieces together the past with a combination of curiosity & regret. He shows man betrayed not only by man but by time
- a recurring theme which has found its proper scenic correlative... Pinter captures the psyches sly manoeuvres for self-respect with a sardonic forgiveness.. .a master craftsman honouring his talent by setting it new difficult tasks". (New Society). " There is hardly a line into which desire pain alarm sorrow rage or some kind of blend of feelings has not been compressed like volatile gas in a cylinder less stable than it looks... Pinters narrative method takes "whats next?" out of the spectators & replaces it with the rather deeper "how?" & "why?" Why did love pass? How did these people cope with the lies the evasions the sudden dangers panic & the contradictory feelings behind their own deftly engineered masks? The plays subject is not sex not even adultery but the politics of betrayal & the damage it inflicts on all involved." (The Times). First staged at the National Theatre in 1978 Betrayal was revived at the Almeida Theatre London in 1991. Twenty years after its first showing it returned to the National in 1998."