New Arts play is an emotional 'Betrayal' By Nick Falzone Daily Arts Writer In many extramarital affairs, the motive for infidelity is simply to escape a lonely life. But in Harold Pinter's comedy, "Betrayal," we discover that in addition to fleeing from solitude through illicit liaisons, the unfaithful characters actually wage a psychological war against each other in the hope of passing their loneliness off to someone else. This weekend, Basement Arts presents Pinter's famous play about a woman's affair with her husband's best friend. But director Tenley Hardin, a senior Theatre concentrator, stresses that although the affair is the backbone of the piece, it is the psychological game that gives the play its life. "What seems obvious is not obvious; the fact that there's infidelity is not what Pinter's trying to tell you," Hardin said. "The play is a game about who can make the other one feel lonelier." The game ultimately centers on Robert, the husband, played by first-year Theatre concentrator Ethan Kogan, and his best friend, Jerry, played by senior Theatre major Thomas Foster. Since the play moves backwards through time, from the end to the beginning of the affair, Robert is cognizant of his wife's infidelities in every scene but the last one. As Kogan describes, much of his character's dialogue consists of subtle attacks against Jerry. "In every scene, I know about the affair, so I'm playing a game with Jerry, trying to make him feel as bad as I do," Kogan said. "But I go after Jerry with puns and anecdotes, little bits in each scene." Hardin adds that the puns and anecdotes utilized by Robert and the other cast members are evocative both of the play's setting, upper class England, and of Pinter's signature writing style. "There are definitely sharp attacks toward the other characters but they're not obvious all the time," Hardin said, adding that the British are generally less forward than Americans when speaking to others. "But there's all this double meaning behind the words; the way they've been written is so brilliant, so intelligent." Hardin said that since his style is so intelligent, "no one does Pinter at the University of Michigan because it's very scary" to perform. She attributes this fear to the complicated language that Pinter employs throughout his work, adding that the four actors in the play have had to rehearse a great deal to master his words. "We've spent a lot of time just reading it and reading it; it's taken time for them to become comfortable with the language, which is very important to the show," Hardin said. The words "aren't necessarily big vocabulary words - it's not Shakespeare - but there's so much meaning behind them." Kogan adds that in addition to mastering the words, he and his fellow actors have had to contend with the unconventionally large amount of pauses in the dialogue. "There are a lot of pauses in his writing, so much that they've named the stop 'the Pinter pause,'" Kogan said. "Even though it's a pause, though, you still have to act it, so we've spent a lot of time with facial expressions and movements." MAJORIE MARSHALL/DAILY School of Music students Thomas Foster, Dave Jones and Ethan Kogan perform in Basement Arts' 'Betrayal.' Originally on page 8A in the 1-19-2000 issue of the Daily.