The Nth Columnist

Quite often, we end up writing about what needs to be said, not what we intend to say. This is because we become so inured to not listening to our real thoughts, that when we put it in charge of our hands and fingers in the strangely magical process of writing, out it all comes. I reread the last article and realised that it didn't actually say that much about Betrayal per se, so I thought I should pay it a revisit. It's now nearly two weeks since we packed up and moved on, and it's all going hazy surprisingly quickly.  So, here are a few thoughts about the play, the story. and the process. Now, being the diligent, attentive student I was back at Bangor University in the 1980s, of course Pinter was on our booklists, and of course I had the collected sets of his plays. Somewhere along the line, however, I omitted to read Betrayal. To be honest, my reading lists often remained in a state of theoretical possibility, due to my intensive studies of the underside of bar tabl

'It's all, all over.' Another bucket of Corvo Bianco, please. I've just come to the end of a run of Harold Pinter's Betrayal at the Progress Theatre in Reading . I performed as Robert, and the play itself received overwhelmingly positive reviews. Needless to say, I was absolutely bloody fantastic - as were my costars, Emma Sterry and Pete Cook, and Mathieu Menard in his cameo as a waiter. In fact, the whole ensemble - director Adrian, SM Tara, Steph, Helen in Wardrobe, and our light and sound guys, Rich and Jon - were brilliant. Pete Cook as Jerry Emma Sterry as Emma. Well, that's my award acceptance speech more or less there. Now, intermittent readers of this intermittent blog, I can hear your eyebrows creaking upward ever so slightly, as I don't think I mention theatre and acting much here (or previously over on Joy Of Raki ). The truth is, I've been away - not just from this blog, but also from performance. Well, 28 years, to be