HappeningPH Theater News! Repertory Philippines Opens 87th Season with Harold Pinter’s BETRAYAL—Catch It Until March 17

Repertory Philippines opens its 87th season with the Manila premiere of Betrayal, one of the best-known plays by British theater icon and Nobel Prize winner in Literature Harold Pinter.

Betrayal will feature London-based Filipino actors James Bradwell, James Cooney, and Vanessa White with Jef Flores and Regina De Vera as covers.

Running on weekends from March 1 to 17, this production employs a reverse-chronological structure to tell the story and examine the consequences of an extramarital affair on three complex individuals and how clandestine meetings turn to dramatic confrontations. A recipient of the Laurence Olivier Award and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, the drama has featured prominent British actors like Michael Gambon, Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, and Tom Hiddleston.

This Manila staging of Betrayal holds many other firsts for REP. It is going to be the first Pinter play of the theater company. It marks the Philippine directorial debut of Victor Lirio, a Manila-born, New York and London based actor and theatre director, who trained at London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and earned his Master of Arts in Drama Directing from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.  He was most recently Resident Director on Dr Semmelweis at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London’s West End starring Oscar winner Mark Rylance.

REP presents Betrayal as part of The Bridge Project, a collaboration among global professional theater practitioners of Filipino descent from New York, London, and Manila. Launched by Lirio in June 2020 in London and currently in partnership with REP in Manila, this global undertaking serves as a skills exchange platform. The Bridge Project will offer free Knowledge Sharing Sessions that will touch on theater topics like Shakespeare text rhetoric, text & scene study, script analysis for visual designers, voice and theater experience, as well as a speaker series forum and some staged readings. The classes will be held at MINT College, Mckinley Hill and Ortigas Campus. Registration begins the first week of February. Interested parties may download application forms at repertoryphilippines.ph and their social media channels.

The three Filipino-British actors, along with two New York-based Filipino-American designers and Lirio, are being flown in to Manila by REP in February not only to perform in Betrayal, but also to hold free masterclasses, lectures, and readings, for Filipino theater practitioners and audiences.

REP’s 87th Season will also include “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change”, “Jepoy and the Magic Circle”, and “Going Home to Christmas” featuring the music of Jose Mari Chan.