Reduced to its bare bones, the situation [in Betrayal] teeters on the edge of soap opera. But what interests Pinter more than the future of [his characters'] relationships is the impact of knowledge on behavior: how Robert won't play squash with Jerry though he continues to do business with him, how Emma has conceived a child by her husband while her lover was abroad, how Robert hates his work because he really hates books, how Emma confessed her adultery to Robert in Venice after he had already discovered it. These revelations in reverse introduce a novel irony into contemporary drama—common enough to ancient Greeks watching a familiar story like the Oedipus myth—where the audience is privy to certain events before they actually happen. But where Sophoclean irony leads to tragic inexorability, Pinter's irony issues only in sangfroid….

Left-wing critics have criticized this play because the people...