HAROLD Pinter’s Betrayal, at Z Arts Centre, Hulme, seems a strange choice for a youth company  – especially as none of the actors is more than 21.  Yet Joe Meighan, the director and producer, who is just 20, says he loves it and it’s a change from the musicals his company, Meighan Youth Theatre, have become known for.

 

It’s about adult people yet, despite the subject – an eternal triangle - adult means mature rather than adult in the porn movie sense.

 

For there’s nothing pornographic about this play even though the action takes place near a bed.  You could say it is about love -  or is it?

 

The play takes us on a backwards journey from 1977 to 1968.   Indeed, it starts two years after a seven-year affair between Emma and her husband’s best friend Jerry, who is also married,  has ended.

 

Robert has no idea that Emma and Jerry spend passionate afternoons together and Jerry remains friends with him.   Indeed you wonder sometimes whether their friendship is more important than their love of Emma.   Could the two men be on the verge of something more than friendship?

 

Rachel Isbister  and Ryan Clarke get the relationship between the lovers just right  capturing their sexual chemistry.

 

Most of the time they simply jog along like a married couple just chatting.   His facial expression is especially relevant as they both worry whether their spouses have found out about them.

 

Glints of humour mostly come from Ryan Hall as Emma’s cheated on husband, Robert,  and praise is due to the youngest cast member, 16-year-old Dillon Burgess, the waiter with the exaggerated Italian accent.

 

All three main characters grasp the Pinter pause without over exaggerating it.

 

To avoid the problem of accents, Joe has set the play in Salford.    He often includes seventies pop music in the background  and his full wall backdrops of the sites where things happen is excellent.

 

It is remarkable that this play has been put together in just five days yet the four actors have grasped both the meaning and hidden meanings so well.

 

Well done MYT for having the courage to put on something completely different.

 

Betrayal continues at Z-Arts, Stretford Road, Hulme M15 5ZA at 8 pm tonight (Saturday, August 2)   Just come along.   Tickets are £10.   Star rating * * * *