Word: ducey
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...whatever the directorial interpretation, Betrayal remains a riveting play. This is largely due to the regressive action; Pinter begins at the end and shifts backwards through time. The nine scenes in Betrayal trace the collapse, decline, and eventual establishment of an affair between Jerry (John Ducey) and Emma (Reid Cottingham), the wife of Jerry's best friend Robert (Glenn Kiser...
...Robert has discovered the affair before Jerry knows), but it also invests the final, earliest scene with a sense of pathos that would be absent in a more traditional arranging of the play's events. This affair is, quite literally, doomed from the start, and the convincing passion which Ducey and Cottingham demonstrate in the play's final scenes elicits our sympathy in one of the play's few genuinely touching moments...
Havel's creative script is not wasted on director Orion Ross. Ross molds the play into a dimension not only of sight, but of sound. The play opens with China Forbes off-stage, singing in her clear, strong, beautiful voice, while John Ducey and Blake Spraggins bumble about in pantomime as social scientists Karel Kriebl and Emil Machal. And in the first true scene, Ross creates a breakfast interlude in which the clanking of silverware, plates and glasses speak as much as the characters at the table...
...Ducey and Spaggins play well off each other as they bump into furniture and smirk at each other. Ducey is especially charming as he strokes the machine and strikes up conversation about "high-altitude plums." Beneath his black cloak, Jeff Branion as their supervisor Beck adds just the right ridiculousness to the play, and lifts the door slam to a level nearing comic genius...
Hill's production of Miller's classic is so nearly perfect that even less central characters contribute their share to the play's convincing truthfulness. Ducey is sweetly sincere as Willy's neglected but aiming-to-please second son, Happy, who picks up Willy's fractured dream and vows to fulfill it after his father's death. Chip Rossetti puts out a convincing performance as Willy's boss Howard, but it is unfortunate that he has been forced to play three different parts throughout the drama. Two of these are pivotal characters in Willy's demise, and casting Rossetti...