Though completely lucid in narrative line, Harold Pinter's Betrayal remains a puzzling play…. Spare in writing, succinct in statement, it hides as much as it reveals. It calls for a do-it-yourself interpretation. (p. 92)

Pinter does many things with [his] plot structure. On the simplest level he indulges in tight-lipped irony about English upper-middle-class manners—for instance, in the routine banality of exchanges apropos the playing of squash and the publishing of books. But the absurdities of such palaver, Pinter implies, are a cover-up for rarely expressed emotions. How genuine or profound these emotions may be is hard to say. They may have withered for lack of manifestation: correct social ritual has replaced reality of feeling.

Everyone betrays the other or betrays him or herself. But since there appears to be so little love or passion here, we can hardly speak of betrayal. Or is their betrayal only the...