The affair at the centre of Harold Pinter’s 1978 Betrayal is just one of many deceptions the near 50-year-old classic explores.

It’s the Nobel Laureate’s most revived story: a nine-year-long affair told in reverse chronological order: Boy meets girl; Best friend of boy falls in love with girl; Girl falls in love with boy.

What could easily descend into a clichéd domestic drama in the hands of any other playwright is elevated by Pinter’s dry wit and keen eye for our most humane contradictions. And what is more contradictory than love – its loneliness and fallibility, its ability to make us hate each other?

Heath Ivey-Law and Michaela Bedel in Betrayal. Photo © Shay Bedel

Each scene in this one-act classic peels back any idealistic notion of love to reveal its defining characteristic – and our most inevitable betrayal: self-deception.

It’s also very funny. Betrayal’s tight 70-minute runtime has as much tragedy in it as it does humour. That’s the Pinteresque style, really: bleak realism made bleaker by Pinter’s absurdist wit.

The...