At the Theater, You Can Feel the Connection

LONDON -- “MY dear Lady Disdain,” as she is sometimes called, has been struck by a compelling need to confide. And so Beatrice, in the beguiling person of Eve Best, walks to the edge of the stage at Shakespeare’s Globe — the popular Thames-side theater — shedding self-possession with every step. She is wearing an expression we have never seen on her before: elated, aghast and altogether undone.

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Manuel Harlan

Eve Best and Charles Edwards in “Much Ado About Nothing” at Shakespeare's Globe, directed by Jeremy Herrin.

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London Theater Journal

Ben Brantley’s essays from London, where a number of plays, some headed to Broadway, are evoking strong responses from audiences and critics.

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Johan Persson

Kristin Scott Thomas and Douglas Henshall in "Betrayal."

She is in love, she tells us in astonishment, and before she can stop herself she has bent down, leaned over and embraced a “groundling” member of the audience, who is standing in the Elizabethan-style open pit. The unsuspecting gentleman reddens. So does Beatrice. So, vicariously, do all of us watching, but it’s a happy burn we feel.

Startling moments of contact like this one, from the Globe’s summer-kissed production of “Much Ado About Nothing,” are happening with blessed frequency all over town. I mean, metaphorically. Kristin Scott Thomas (starring in a gorgeous revival of Harold Pinter’s 1978 drama “Betrayal”), Kevin Spacey (who plays Shakespeare’s demented Richard III) and Dominic West (in the title role in Simon Gray’s 1971 comedy “Butley”) never physically reach out and touch anyone in their audiences.

But like Ms. Best in “Much Ado” each has extraordinary moments in which they connect with us in ways that feel almost embarrassingly intimate. When this occurs, it is as if we have been afforded a clear and unblocked view of a character that no one on the stage has been allowed. We may even feel kind of proud of our insight, though the credit is hardly ours.

There’s an added element in these performances that makes them especially precious. Ms. Best (and Charles Edwards as Beatrice’s reluctant lover, Benedick), Ms. Scott Thomas (and her excellent leading — and misleading — men Douglas Henshall and Ben Miles), Mr. Spacey and Mr. West are all portraying people to whom control is very important, including the control of their own emotions.

The adulterers of “Betrayal,” the mutually attracted quipsters pretending to be adversaries in “Much Ado,” the scheming arch-manipulator who becomes Richard III and the intellectually bullying, alcoholic English professor Ben Butley: these are men and women who wear masks as armor and camouflage and who may well (to paraphrase Hamlet) assume virtues when they have them not.

That sounds like a fair job description of acting, doesn’t it? So when we see the social ice cracking on Ms. Scott Thomas’s exquisitely self-possessed Emma in “Betrayal,” with the possibility of some serious melting to come, we are watching a commanding actress in full control of her craft portraying a commanding woman whose facade is slipping. It’s much the same when Ms. Best’s Beatrice goes soft and solemn in the middle of a volley of witticisms and has to readjust her manner like someone tucking in a loose article of clothing.

The presentation of confusion with clarity, of turmoil with a precision that is legible to the audience (but not to the other characters onstage) is what makes these performances so affecting. In “Betrayal,” directed by Ian Rickson (“Jerusalem”) at the Comedy Theater, there are three such paradoxical portraits. Mr. Miles (as Robert, Emma’s husband) and Mr. Henshall (as Jerry, Emma’s lover and Robert’s best friend) are nearly as moving and unsettling as Ms. Scott Thomas is.

Told in reverse chronology, “Betrayal” follows a shifting romantic triangle with an elliptical terseness (this is Pinter after all) that can come across as chilly. But Mr. Rickson’s interpretation brings out depths of pain and passion I had never felt before. The possibility of physical violence seems to rumble like distant thunder, finally erupting in one moment in a Venice hotel room that knocks the breath out of you.

This production parses jealousy into an emotion that’s not only sexual but also infinitely wistful and thwarted. The characters here are especially envious and suspicious of what the others may or may not know or understand about what has occurred in their shared lives. Knowledge is power in “Betrayal”; it’s what allows you to think you possess someone else.