Theater
Betrayal
Thu & Fri, Apr 30 & May 1, 8pm
Sat, May 2, 7pm
Sun, May 3, 6pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Biblioteca Pública
150 pesos

Harold Pinter

Betrayal with a twist

Betrayal is a story told backwards. Beginning with the last events, it ends with the beginning of everything. What’s next?

This question comes to mind when everything has already happened. In a superficial reading, it may seem that the subject of the play is a love triangle and adultery, but when the writer is Harold Pinter, things go deeper than that.

Pinter’s three P’s, politics, passion and poetry, are evident in Betrayal, which shows situations in which political habits of interaction between people are unveiled. In Betrayal’s case, these interactions occur in the closest sphere, between friends and family.

Betrayal exhibits the lies, manipulation, hypocrisy, fear and strategies people practice as daily ways of interaction. This, on any scale—personal, communal or global—has only one possible consequence: damage and destruction all around, even for the innocent ones, those who are unaware of the causes.

Harold Pinter was born in London in 1930. He married Antonia Fraser. He wrote 29 plays including The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, The Homecoming and Betrayal; 21 screenplays including The Servant, The Go-Between, The French Lieutenant’s Woman and, most recently, Sleuth. He directed 27 theater productions, including James Joyce’s Exiles, David Mamet’s Oleanna, 7 plays by Simon Gray and many of his own plays including his last, Celebration, paired with his first, The Room, at The Almeida Theatre in London in the spring of 2000.

In 2005, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Other awards include the Companion of Honour for services to Literature, the Legion D’Honneur, the Laurence Olivier Award and the Moliere D'Honneur for lifetime achievement. In 1999, he was made a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature. He received honorary degrees from 18 universities.

Harold Pinter died last December 24; he was 78 years old.

We are presenting this work as a tribute to his genius. The cast is Gregory Mori, Flor Dengreville, Ricky W. Galera and Doménico Espinosa, and the work is directed by Mariana Alatorre.