KEY POINTS:
Oliver Driver is scared. For the first time since 2005, Driver performs a leading dramatic role rather than larger-than-life comedic parts like those of last year's Irma Vep and Twelfth Night the year before that.
He plays Jerry in Harold Pinter's Betrayal where an affair destroys a marriage and a long-term friendship when Robert (Colin Moy) discovers Jerry, his best friend, has been having an affair with his wife, Emma (Michelle Langstone).
Written in 1978, Betrayal remains relevant because of its enduring themes of love and duplicity but it was ahead of its time in telling a story in reverse chronology. It starts with the aftermath of the affair rather than the first flirtations.
Driver usually approaches characters by asking what would have occurred in his life for him to become that person but he is playing Jerry differently.
"He is in his 40s, he's a fully formed man and he's British. I know that sounds trite but it means there is not a lot for me to place in my immediate frame of reference. His mannerisms, his patterns of speech are all very different to mine."
Driver has been directing a lot lately and feels it is important to remind himself of what life on stage is like. He likes the fact that Betrayal has only three actors which makes it intense and demanding work.
"You approach every script like an investigator trying to work out why it was written the way it was. The thing with Pinter is that every pause, every comma - everything means something and you have to get it right. It is certainly not like a comedy where you can make a mistake and twist it so it becomes the funniest thing of the night."
The relationship between the three actors needed to be relaxed and believable so it helps that Moy and Driver are close friends. "It saves time in the rehearsal room because we don't have to work on creating something which already exists."
Betrayal fits well with Silo's re-working of modern classics and Pinter has been popular in Auckland in recent years. Actor Michael Lawrence has led the revival, staging and starring in several renditions of Pinter's plays but this time he tackles something different.
He appears in the contemporary New Zealand play Finding Murdoch by reporter-turned-playwright Margo McRae. It centres on the enigmatic ex-All Black Keith Murdoch and the female journalist who found him after Murdoch's 18 years of self-imposed exile.
In a notorious late-night incident in 1972, Murdoch went from hero to villain in a matter of hours when he punched a security guard in a Welsh bar shortly after scoring the All Blacks' only try in a victory over Wales.
Expelled from the team, Murdoch was sent home. To avoid the media fuss awaiting him, he disembarked in Australia and moved to the Outback where he has lived ever since.
It is easy to see why director Paul Gittins cast Lawrence as Murdoch. The actor, once a rugby and league player, is a dead ringer for the former prop. The two are nearly the same height and weight and apparently share an almost obsessive fondness for tidiness.
But Finding Murdoch is not a bloke's rugby yarn; it is a first-hand portrayal of what happens when two forces - rugby and the media - collide and it is written from a woman's point of view.
In 1990, McRae, who was working on the television series Mud and Glory, achieved the dream of many sports reporters. She found Murdoch and spoke to him for 45 minutes. "It was the need to tell his story and to also express my increasing disillusionment with the direction of television that propelled me to write this play."
Gittins says auditions for a female lead were extensive. He was mesmerised from the outset by Sarah Somerville, best known to Auckland audiences for her children's theatre company Phineas Phrog. "Sarah has been in town for a couple of years but I hadn't heard much about her. It was a wonderful surprise to discover this new talent had an extensive theatre background."
They both did a runner
Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter was married to actor Vivien Merchant from 1956-80. Betrayal is based on his seven-year affair with journalist Joan Bakewell.
In 1975, he left Merchant to live with Lady Antonia Fraser, who was married to Sir Hugh Fraser. After both parties divorced, Pinter and Fraser married in October 1980.
The reception came two weeks before the wedding because Merchant delayed signing the papers. She died of alcoholism two years later and their son, Daniel, became estranged from his father, to whom he has not spoken since 1993.
Finding Murdoch ends in 1990. When McRae tracked Keith Murdoch down he politely refused to be interviewed on camera but allowed the crew to film him. The next day, McRae went to get more footage of him at the farm where he worked - and he ran off.
PERFORMANCE
What: Betrayal by Harold Pinter
Where and when: Herald Theatre, June 21-July 19
What: Finding Murdoch by Margo McRae
Where: Musgrove Studio, Maidment Theatre, June 26-July 19
