From Nashville Scene 04/02/2003:

Review: Pulling Off Pinter
Tennessee Repertory Theatre is on a roll,
as its current production of Betrayal attests
By MARTIN BRADY

Until last week, Tennessee Repertory Theatre, the state's largest professional theater company, had never staged a play by Harold Pinter, arguably the most influential playwright of the last half-century. Perhaps it's just as well. Pulling off Pinter is no easy feat; the master's ground-breaking absurdist works from the 1960s, his most fertile period, pose distinctive challenges in particular. Hence an organization such as the Rep, which has labored for years simply to maintain a solid audience for more recognizable or plainly commercial fare, may have logically opted out of offering Nashvillians something as formidable and devastating as Pinter's The Homecoming.

However, if the sold-out crowd at TPAC's Johnson Theater last Saturday night is any indication, the Rep's Off-Broadway Series has tapped into a vein of sophisticated local theatergoers, who enthusiastically embraced the company's new production of Pinter's Betrayal. This tightly written deconstruction of a love triangle dates from 1978, and some theaters have chosen in recent years to update the time frame to the modern day. It's of no real consequence, however. Rep director Brant Pope has elected to go with the original script, which offers few remarkable clues to lead us to believe we're anywhere but the here and now.

What is fascinatingly remarkable is Pinter's cagily dyslexic arrangement of scenes, which begin in 1977, then work backward to 1968 as the play progresses. Instead of portraying the evolution of an affair between two married persons, the playwright starts long after the liaison is over, then works in reverse, through its dissolution, fragmentation, fulfillment, necessary deceptions, excitement and initial incendiary moments.

Of course, this structural trickery is only part of the play's beauty. The story of Jerry and Emma, the lovers, and Emma's husband, Robert, is involvingly written and provocatively pitched, such that the notion of an affair's illicitness becomes a lot less important than the subtle revelations about who knew what about whom, and when. The cuckolded Robert is neither naïf nor typical victim, for example; he has disarming revelations of his own, and he even has the self-awareness to state flatly that he considers longtime publishing colleague Jerry to be a better friend to him than his wife, the affair notwithstanding. Undercurrents of tension and personal insecurity mingle with adult humor in Pinter's carefully crafted dialogue, which is "veddy British" and generally devoid of his intriguing but confoundingly characteristic pregnant pauses. The exchanges here are mostly expressive of grown-ups playing at the game of love and relationships at a fairly high and courteously manipulative level.

Director Pope moves his players about efficiently and believably in Paul Gatrell's tasteful yet economical in-the-square setting, and the first-rate cast does its part to make this production somewhat of a bellwether moment in Nashville theatrical history. Local pro David Alford is smoothly effective as Jerry, in what may be his finest performance since he played Torvald in A Doll's House some three years ago. British actress Victoria Stilwell is a winning Emma, all pretty, prim, precise and very clean. Broadway and regional actor David Sitler makes his Rep debut as Robert, and he more than ably holds up his end in helping to define this deliciously conflicted threesome. In a brief, uncredited appearance as a waiter, Peter Vann is almost sublime.

Now that Pinter has been met successfully, the Rep has announced further interesting selections for next season's Off-Broadway Series, which include David Mamet's A Life in the Theatre (Nov. 11-22) and Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Jan. 27-Feb. 7). As it stands, with several recent high-gloss productions to its credit, The Rep's on a bit of a roll. If you can get tickets to Betrayal, by all means go.

Betrayal
Presented by Tennessee Repertory Theatre
Through April 5 at TPAC's Johnson Theater