“Dan strikes his breast frequently and says he doesn’t feel it here, the humanity of the character. “Rehearsals are not going well at the National,” Fraser recounted in her memoir Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter.
But according to Pinter’s second wife, author Antonia Fraser-who also got together with the playwright via an affair, but that's another story-the production wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. Helmed by Royal Shakespeare Company founder Peter Hall, Betrayal premiered at London’s National Theatre in 1978, starring real-life married couple Penelope Wilton and Daniel Massey as philandering wife Emma and her husband, Robert, and Michael Gambon as Robert’s best friend (and Emma’s secret lover) Jerry. “At the time when he first sent me the script, I was deeply distressed to have our private affair so glaringly presented on stage.” But Pinter continued to work on the script, without the approval of his ex-lover-it is called Betrayal, after all. “The play portrayed many of the events of the affair between us, with an accuracy verging on the literal,” Bakewell told The Telegraph.
The playwright sent the completed script to Joan Bakewell, but her response was less than positive. Inspired by his real-life love triangle, Pinter began to work on Betrayal, a drama detailing the secret affair of two already-married lovers, told in reverse chronological order. “I remember vividly Harold's indignation at the fact that I had known for a long time about the affair without saying anything,” Michael Bakewell said in Michael Billington’s 2007 biography Harold Pinter. The secret relationship lasted for seven years, until Michael Bakewell revealed that he knew about his friend and his wife. As Bakewell and Pinter carried on a secret affair, the playwright became fast friends with his lover’s husband, BBC radio producer Michael Bakewell. There was only one problem-they were both married to other people. Read below to find out how Harold Pinter’s real tryst inspired a play about infidelity and deception that great actors can't resist.Īt a London party in 1960, playwright Harold Pinter fell head over heels for a young BBC reporter named Joan Bakewell. Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz and Rafe Spall are embroiled in a secret love triangle in the new Broadway revival of Betrayal, opening October 27 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.
0 kommentar(er)
