{"id":27276,"date":"2007-01-16T11:35:00","date_gmt":"2007-01-16T11:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/?p=27276"},"modified":"2024-07-04T13:51:25","modified_gmt":"2024-07-04T05:51:25","slug":"enjoy-the-silence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/articles\/2007\/01\/enjoy-the-silence\/","title":{"rendered":"Enjoy the Silence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

The semi-autobiographical domestic drama by Nobel\nlaureate Harold Pinter, Betrayal<\/em>\n(staged at the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre Pentas 2 between January 5th<\/sup>\nand 14th<\/sup>), starts off with a scene between a pair of former\nadulterous lovers, Emma and Jerry. From their conversation we eventually learn\nthat, apart from their affair, another major relationship has unravelled —\nEmma’s marriage to Robert, who happens to be Jerry’s colleague and best friend.\nWe are left to question what happens with the other major relationships at\nstake: the friendship between Robert and Jerry, and even Jerry’s relationship\nwith his own wife, Judith (who is discussed but never appears in the play).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Considering the perpetual dearth of good, original\nwriting for Malaysian theatre, the choice to stage this much-acclaimed work was\nindeed gratifying — if only to introduce good playwriting to new audiences.\nFurthermore, given the nationwide obsession with couplings and de-couplings —\nconsider, over the past year, the ruckus over Mawi’s break-up with his fianc\u00e9;\nSiti Nurhaliza’s wedding; the shamefaced revelation of rock star Awie’s\nclandestine polygamous marriage (made known through his acrimonious divorce\nfrom first wife Arni Nazira); and the resurgence of public debate on polygamy\n(although, strictly speaking, this is not about coupling, but rather tripling, quadrupling\nand so on) — the choice to stage this particular Pinter play seemed quite apt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My excitement about this particular production was\npersonal: a few months ago, while browsing the aisles of Kinokuniya, I chanced\nupon a list of must-read plays in Jeffrey Hatcher’s The Art & Craft of Playwriting<\/em>. Betrayal<\/em> was given quite a prominent mention, so I decided to get\nthe text — but it stayed on my bookshelf for a bit, untouched. News of KLPac’s\nstaging made me immediately devour the play. Needless to say, I was immensely\nimpressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is deceptively simple in form: throughout nine\nscenes, unfolding in reverse chronological order, the play moves through the\nstages of Jerry and Emma’s affair, while also exploring the unravelling of Emma\nand Robert’s marriage. The dialogue is classic Pinter: seemingly trivial on the\nsurface, but punctuated with pauses and silences that just keep building\ntension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apparent\nBanality<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Director James Lee, in his programme notes, admitted\nthat: ‘The play is quite a tough one,’ adding that he quickly realised this\nduring the rehearsal process. Coming from James — who has won international\naccolades for writing and directing minimalist, Taiwanese New Wave (and some\nmight argue even Pinter-esque) films such as Room to Let<\/em> and The Beautiful\nWashing Machine<\/em> — I admire this kind of candid honesty as an artist.\nUnfortunately for him, though, his struggle with Betrayal<\/em>‘s text took its toll on the life of the production, as a\nwhole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take, for example, the opening scene: Emma (Bernice\nChauly) has a crucial revelation to make to Jerry (Ari Ratos) — she has\nconfessed her affair with Jerry to her husband, Robert (Vernon Adrian Emuang),\nand they are separating — which she tries to evade by talking about more\ntrivial matters. The dialogue is understated, opening with a simple “How\nare you?” from Emma:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JERRY: All right. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

EMMA: You look well.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

JERRY: Well, I’m not all that well,\nreally. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

EMMA: Why? What’s the matter?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

JERRY:\nHangover.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there is real feeling to be found underneath this\napparent banality, and it is revealed in the strategic pauses and silences.\nVery important information is revealed in this understated manner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the flatness with which Ari’s Jerry responded that\nnight did nothing to peel away the many layers of betrayal that continued\nsurfacing throughout the play. Instead, it made him come across as merely\nsleazy — it conjured images of a lecherous English vicar in my own mind.\nPerhaps it might have provoked some audience members to think: “Well thank\nGod she stopped seeing him — wonder what her husband is like?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The visual effect of smoke curling up from Bernice’s\nlit cigarette became an almost ghostly presence, hanging over Emma and Jerry’s\nheads — but this sense of suspense was killed in the very next scene, when\nJerry summons Robert to his study, seeking absolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking like a character out of The Dick Van Dyke\nShow, and with the same monotonous delivery that plagued Ari’s performance,\nVernon’s Robert appeared as even more of a schmuck than Jerry. We eventually\nlearn that, in addition to indulging in his own extra-marital adventures, he\nhas been prone to treating Emma violently in their marriage: “It’s true\nI’ve hit Emma once or twice. But that wasn’t to defend a principle … I just\nfelt like giving her a good bashing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this point, we were left to wonder what on earth\nEmma ever saw in either of these men. We knew exactly what both of them\nwould’ve — or should’ve, or could’ve -\u00ad seen in Emma: a luminous performance\nby Bernice made her character suitably brittle, when confronted with the\nuncomfortable questions Robert and Jerry ask her; and comfortably sexy at\nother, more playful moments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, the one-dimensional portrayals of her\nco-actors meant that the scenes that did not include Emma seemed interminable.\nTake, for example, the scene where Robert and Jerry have dinner. In this scene,\nRobert knows that Jerry is having an affair with Emma, but Jerry does not know\nthat Robert knows. A waiter intrudes, periodically, to draw their attention to\nthe menu and their food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a scene fraught with much tension and irony —\nyet Ari and Vernon again came off flat, and the scene actually sagged. By the\ntime the waiter (played by Caecar Chong) made his appearance, the comic relief\n(“Venice, signore? Beautiful … You see that painting on the wall?”\n— and a light comes on a seat in the audience, leaving him or her to blink or\ncower — “Is Venice.”) seemed forced and obligatory. It was such as shame,\nbecause every single one of Pinter’s lines and pauses could have yielded so much\nmore drama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Small, Low\nKey<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m not sure if this flatness was a decision made by\nthe actors or the director. Quoting James’s notes again, the production tried\nto ‘offer a glimpse of an affair that is played out as a small, low key\nrealistic study of human beings trapped in a very real situation which could\nhappen to anyone, anywhere at anytime’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s nothing inherently wrong in envisioning Betrayal <\/em>played out in a low key and\nrealistic style. Pinter is extremely sparse with his stage directions and does\nnot rigidly prescribe any stylistic formula for staging the play. Here are some\nof the more typical stage directions to be found in the published text: ‘She laughs<\/em>‘; ‘Emma on bed reading. Robert at window looking out. She looks up at\nhim, then back at the book<\/em>‘; and, of course, ‘Silence<\/em>‘ and ‘Pause<\/em>‘.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My point is that, even though it makes sense for the\ntext to be staged in a minimalist style, there is actually no explicit\ninstruction from the playwright himself for any kind of rigid stylistic\nadherence. With James’s direction, I felt that ‘small’ and ‘low key’ came\nacross as ‘stifled’ and ‘flat’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The decision to project a slideshow of ‘happier’ times\nat the end of the play (not in the original text) illustrates my point.\nIdeally, it would have been unnecessary; any sort of dramatic colouring of\nthese pleasant memories was already there in the text to begin with. In fact,\nboth Jerry and Emma recount this incident — Jerry taking Emma’s daughter\nCharlotte and tossing her in the air — once each, in great detail. Here,\nhowever, their delivery was stifled in the interest of the aforementioned ‘low\nkey’ execution. Perhaps this is why the production had a need to exhibit a\nslideshow that recreated this incident so literally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were other problems, as well. The set seemed\nunnecessarily literal for such a simple play, resulting in laborious and\noverlong scene changes, masked by a soundtrack of morose song choices. The\nunfortunate positioning of boom microphones cast awkward shadows over the\nscreen projections, creating unintended comic effects; the clumsy scene changes\nprolonged this unintended comedy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately, for fans of Pinter, the brilliance of his writing still shines through. Betrayal<\/em> makes us think about how boundaries of loyalty are drawn and redrawn in human relationships. Is one person’s betrayal of another justified if the other party has also committed an act of betrayal? Is there a possibility of the betrayer redeeming the betrayed at any point — or vice versa? Or do we only betray others because we can’t help betraying ourselves? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

~~~ <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Published: 16.01.2007 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The semi-autobiographical domestic drama by Nobel laureate Harold Pinter, Betrayal (staged at the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre Pentas 2 between January 5th and 14th), starts off with a scene between a pair of former adulterous lovers, Emma and Jerry. From their conversation we eventually learn that, apart from their affair, another major relationship has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":10,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,3569,3535],"tags":[866,1761,2693,742,575,493,49,46,757],"language":[7523],"writer":[7631],"class_list":["post-27276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-review","category-theatre","tag-ari-ratos","tag-bernice-chauly","tag-caecar-chong","tag-harold-pinter","tag-james-lee","tag-klpac","tag-review","tag-theatre","tag-vernon-adrian-emuang","language-english","writer-shanon-shah"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27276"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38746,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27276\/revisions\/38746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27276"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=27276"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}