A three-hander first performed in 1978, with Penelope Wilton, Michael Gambon and Daniel Massey appearing in Peter Hall's original NT production. Jerry and Robert are best friends who studied together, play squash together, and both ended up working as publishers. They are both married and have children, but Jerry has had a seven-year-long affair with Robert's wife Emma. In a sequence of short, ambiguous scenes full of fragmented dialogue that never quite means what it says, Pinter digs back in time to explore different meanings of "betrayal", with each stage that we dig back into the characters' memories revealing another level of their dishonesty to each other and to themselves.

About as serious a take as it's possible to have on the banal topic of bourgeois adultery. ( )

خیلی دوست داشتم و خوشحالم بعد از چند سال که دوست داشتم بخونمش بالاخره موقعیتش رو پیدا کردم! ( )

Read in college (04-05) ( )

One of a few plays I am happy to reread/rewatch. Harold Pinter's inspiration for this was his long-term affair with Joan Bakewell, and he has said how he felt betrayed when he learnt that Joan's husband had known about the affair for a long time and not confronted him. And a wonderful exposure of human nature in the first scene when Jerry says, having heard talk that his ex-lover is seeing another man that he felt irritation that no one gossiped about us like that. Funny and painful, sparse mundane dialogue and plenty of pauses that speak a thousand thoughts. And an arresting back-to-front structure, so the audience know more than the characters as the play progresses. Wonderfully thought-provoking about relationships and what we remember about ourselves. ( )

BUT I WANT THIS NOW!!!

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