REVIEW: ‘Kaliwaan’ finds great performances in a stubborn story of infidelity

REVIEW: ‘Kaliwaan’ finds great performances in a stubborn story of infidelity

“With dignified performances at its center, this Filipino translation of Harold Pinter’s ‘Betrayal’ takes an unexpectedly warm approach to a cold, cruel story.”

Translation is never just about matching words between languages; it’s also concerned with how the tone of a language and the culture surrounding it might transform a text. And in Kaliwaan, Guelan Varela-Luarca’s translation of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, the calculated politeness of the original English script is traded for the jovial, disarming comfort of Tagalog. The story remains untouched—it still unfurls a seven-year affair between a woman and her husband’s best friend, told in reverse—but it’s now been opened up to new emotional territory and new storytelling challenges alike. 

There’s an unexpected warmth that emerges from how Kaliwaan’s characters are written and performed with their newfound candidness. In some ways, the production’s modest, stripped-down approach makes for a tragedy with a more personal sting. But in other ways, it finds greater difficulty justifying how cold and cruel Pinter’s script is—and articulating what we’re really meant to gain from such a story. 

Familiar Language

Where Betrayal’s characters often seem like they’re manipulating one another, Varela-Luarca allows them to let their guard down. The rhythm of their conversations—punctuated by frequent repetition of phrases and details—isn’t tense or confrontational, but carries the familiarity of old friends ostensibly aligned with each other’s emotions. The characters don’t need to scheme to hide or uncover one another’s secrets because the language they use already seems to naturally rule out deception. They speak as if they’ve forgotten that there’s anything to be paranoid about, which makes it all the more affecting that any of them would jeopardize the trust they’ve built.

Kaliwaan maintains Pinter’s narrative experiment of telling this story in reverse. The point of each succeeding scene is no longer the revelation of new information but the reopening of old wounds to see just how deeply these people have allowed themselves to sink. However, it does come to a point where the structure itself begins to override whatever insight we’re ultimately meant to gain. That the characters of Betrayal have been made so sympathetic in this translation is no easy feat. But it’s precisely for this reason that the play’s irreversible conclusion feels even bleaker and difficult to find catharsis in.

Minimalist Style

In this production, there’s no context to cushion what these characters have done to each other. Charles Yee’s bare set, Ninya Bedruz’s lighting, and Arvy Dimaculangan’s sound (which, at times, has difficulty reaching the back of the room) almost intentionally keep any sense of setting secondary. There are no specific interiors to speak of, and any glamour from the characters’ European lifestyles is defused by how barren their surroundings are, leaving their actions to be judged without excuses. And by having them in the same nondescript outfits (designed by Tata Tuviera) for the whole show, the characters become frozen in time, forever chained to their bad decisions.

Director Loy Arcenas follows suit and never over-directs the cast, keeping them just close enough to each other to communicate comfort and a shared history, but never too casually that all tension is lost. Still, as the play goes on, it also begins to feel like the matter-of-factness of this minimalist style dulls the effect of seeing this affair play out exactly as we’re told it would. Conceptually, the show does find fascinating ways around such rigid material, but the material is just so fatalistic in nature that this production’s best efforts can only go so far.

Dignified Performances

Where Kaliwaan blooms to life most unexpectedly, however, is in its three central performances—all of which take these difficult, stubborn characters on the page and lend them dignity and kindness despite all their sins. Nor Domingo’s Jerry seems almost willfully ignorant about the harm he’s causing by betraying his family with his best friend’s spouse, but even this is portrayed with naïve, misguided optimism. Missy Maramara grounds her Emma in a state of constant regret and a desire to make things right, even if she chooses to continue maintaining the affair. A gentleness shapes her performance, letting her self-loathing soften her words and movements instead.

But if this play belongs to any one person, it’s Ron Capinding, who turns in his best performance in recent memory as Emma’s hapless husband Robert. Capinding dials back all the rage and bitterness that this character has every right to feel, and has him look at his wife and his best friend with quiet indignation—as well as a morbid curiosity to see what else they might confess to if he keeps lightly prodding them. You can see every wave of anger well up inside him before subsiding, his everyman demeanor never physically imposing but still proud and self-assured. And when the truth of the affair is revealed to Robert, Capinding’s gradual breakdown and the words catching in his throat cause the weight of this betrayal to come crashing clearly into focus for the first time.

Tickets: P800 – P1250
Show Dates: Aug 22–31 2025
Venue: The Mirror Theatre Studio, SJG Centre, Makati City
Running Time: approximately 1 hour and 20 minutes (without intermission)
Creatives: Harold Pinter (Playwright), Guelan Varela-Luarca (Translation), Loy Arcenas (Direction), Giancarlo Abrahan (Dramaturgy), Charles Yee (Set Design), Tata Tuviera (Costume Design), Ninya Bedruz (Lighting Design), Arvy Dimaculangan (Sound Design), Jenny Jamora (Intimacy Coordination), Zoë de Ocampo (Graphic Design)
Cast: Missy Maramara, Ron Capinding, Nor Domingo