«Die Handlung läuft im umgekehrten Uhrzeigersinn ab, so dass das Stück dort endet, wo der Ehebruch beginnt. Das erlaubt Pinter, die verkreuzten erotischen Beziehungen seiner Charaktere von der Abgestandenheit einer siebenjährigen Liaison zur Leidenschaftlichkeit des ersten Kusses zurückzuführen.» (Die Bühne, Wien).

Pinter reverses conventional chronology to explore the multiple deceptions involved in a triangular relationship: far from being a simple adultery-play, it is really about the endlessly corrosive nature of betrayal which infects lovers' trust, male friendship, youthful idealism and even one's sense of self..

The scenes are ripe with suppressed tension, confused and unspoken feelings and torn loyalties. The three main characters are members of the 'creative class,' college-educated people looking at how they compromised their ideals in their 20s to attain an upper-middle-class lifestyle. There are lies, masking other lies. And through flashbacks and somewhat cryptic bits of dialogue, the audience must piece together these relationships -- and their moral implications.

Winner of the Laurence Olivier/BBC Award for Best New Play and the SWET Award

Reviews
Betrayal is an exquisite play, brilliantly simple in form and courageous in its search for a poetry that turns banality into a melancholy beauty... Pinter has never written anything simpler, sadder or funnier than Betrayal.
- Newsweek

Each time I see it I discover something new...
- The Guardian

There is hardly a line into which desire, pain, alarm, sorrow, rage or some blend of feelings has not been compressed, like volatile gas in a cylinder less stable than it looks...
- The Times

...a powerful expression of the chasm between recollection and reality, of the gaps between people who need to be intimate with each other.
- Village Voice