Onstage at the Huntington Theatre, it’s 1977 and a man and a woman, Jerry and Emma, sit drinking in a pub. The conversation is halting, and we find out two things almost immediately– they were lovers, they are not now. The play–BETRAYAL— then unfolds in a series of short scenes that flow backwards in time– with a few jogs forward– to 1968.  I’m immediately intrigued. I want to know what lead to this moment– like a bit of gossip. I need the WHOLE story.

Nobel Prize-winning English playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor Harold Pinter gives us the whole story (based on a particular extramarital exploit of his own) and then some–in reverse. The structure of the play creates a strange kind of momentum that prompts us to continually ask: what did these characters know and when did they know it?

Certainly they have betrayed their spouses, and little by little we see how they have betrayed each other. But then we find ourselves looking IN at the characters and we see the way each of them remembers, and what their selective memories reveal about them, their feelings for each other and their spouses, and ultimately how close their memories are to the truth. Their memories, in fact, betray them; they have been fooling themselves too.

Directed by Maria Aitken, it’s a cool and elegant production, 80 minutes, no intermission.  Pinter’s dialogue which lurches around ambivalently, in real life fits and starts, finds its rhythm here. Jerry, played by a rather too-old seeming Alan Cox— doesn’t register his lover’s telltale inconsistencies.  It’s never clear what Emma–the polished beauty Gretchen Egolf— would have seen in him.  Jerry and Robert (Mark H.Dold), Emma’s cuckolded husband, seem to care more for each other than either of the women in their lives. Those women– and we never meet Jerry’s wife– may have realized this– and chosen to forget.

Only we the audience have the advantage of 20/ 20 hindsight, which here– in true Pinteresque fashion– raises more questions than it answers.  In a final brilliant bit of staging, we are poignantly teased with the possibility that time is static and available to us, and that somehow we might go back and re-arrange it all.  Thanks for the memories– if only they were true.

Presented by Huntington Theatre Company through December 9!