Returning to their new home at the Herald Theatre on June 20th following their sellout season of Rabbit, Silo Theatre presents the work of writer Harold Pinter with his 1978 play Betrayal. Silo Theatre have selected Pinter's taut celebration of passion as fertile ground ready to be mined by actors Colin Moy (In My Father's Den), Michelle Langstone (McLeod's Dau

Returning to their new home at the Herald Theatre on June 20th following their sellout season of Rabbit, Silo Theatre presents the work of writer Harold Pinter with his 1978 play Betrayal. Silo Theatre have selected Pinter's taut celebration of passion as fertile ground ready to be mined by actors Colin Moy (In My Father's Den), Michelle Langstone (McLeod's Daughters) and Oliver Driver - who returns to the stage for his first dramatic role since 2005's BASH.

This production also continues Silo Theatre's symbiotic relationship with London's Donmar Warehouse, who revived the play to universal acclaim last year. This trio of Auckland's finest adopt roles that have been interpreted by actors such as Jeremy Irons, Juliette Binoche, Raul Julia, Ben Kingsley, Patricia Hodge, Blythe Danner and Liev Schreiber.

The high price of passion is examined when an illicit affair destroys a marriage and sabotages a friendship. Robert and Jerry were best friends. Robert and Emma were married. Jerry and Emma were lovers. Welcome to the tangled emotional world of Betrayal.

Unconventionally, the play is performed in reverse chronology - starting at the poignant end of the affair and tracking back to its illicit first kiss; a storytelling technique used famously in the Christopher Nolan movie Memento, starring Guy Pearce. This thrilling technique stops the audience from concentrating on cause and effect and making the associated moral judgements that a seven-year affair would trigger. Instead, the device throws up a magnificent puzzle for the audience to solve, with each character eliciting our disdain and admiration in different measures at different stages.

Harold Pinter has been heralded as one of the great writers of the past century with a large canon of which written for stage and screen. The Homecoming, Old Times and The Birthday Party are widely regarded as theatrical touchstones, and Pinter himself has been greeted with every major award for stage and screen, including the Tony Award, Laurence Olivier Special Award, BAFTA Award and the David Cohen Prize. In 2005, Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the highest honour available to any writer in the world. In announcing the award, Horace Engdahl, Chairman of the Swedish Academy, said that Pinter was an artist 'who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday language and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms.'

Pinter's Betrayal was provoked by the affair the writer had between 1962 and 1969 with British television presenter Joan Bakewell, while she was married to BBC producer Michael Bakewell, who was also one of Pinter's best friends.