Starring is Janie Dee, who made an impression on both sides of the Atlantic in Alan Ayckbourn's Comic Potential. She won an Evening Standard and an Olivier Award for her performance in that comedy.
Joining her in Pinter's romantic triangle are Hugo Speer and Aden Billett.
Pinter's tale runs from the present to the past, tracing in retrospect nine years in the history of the three characters, in which an affair is exposed and a marriage falls apart. It first premiered in 1978. It was later made into a movie starring Ben Kingsley, Patricia Hodge and Jermey Irons.
Betrayal was not the first play to toy with backward-running chronology. Kaufman and Hart tried it in the 1930s with Merrily We Roll Along, which was adapted into a 1981 musical by Stephen Sondheim. However, Pinter's drama remains the most famous and popular work to employ the device. The play is perhaps the dramatist's most produced title.
