Harold Pinter's 1978 drama "Betrayal" is famously told more-or-less backwards. It starts, therefore, with an ending: Emma (Zawe Ashton) and Jerry (Charlie Cox) are meeting in a pub two years after their affair is over. She's obviously uncomfortable, twisting her arms around herself, but also a bit flirty and hopeful. He's dismissive. Their conversation seems to be about nothing — but there's a reason why there's a thing called "Pinter pauses." There is more said in the silences here than is expressed in pages of dialogue by other playwrights.

Director Jamie Lloyd uses a nearly empty rotating stage to figuratively turn the clock back to show how the affair affected Emma's husband Robert (Tom Hiddleston), who is also Jerry's best friend. And then we go back further, until the play ends with Emma's and Jerry's first, flirtatious moments. But the most interesting part of the staging is how, when two characters are talking, we almost always see the third on stage. Maybe they're wandering around a bit aimlessly. Maybe they're sitting in a corner, eating an apple. But it is clear that in this romantic triangle, neither couple is ever truly alone. 

The production was sold out in London and is a hot ticket here — that may partly be because Hiddleston is Loki in Marvel's Avengers movies, and Cox plays the superhero Daredevil on Marvel TV shows. But unlike many previous productions seen on Broadway, this is not stunt casting. Both Hiddleston and Cox play their characters with an understated sensitivity, allowing us to see their characters' hard shells as well as their soft underbellies. And Ashton is wonderful, her fluid performance making the most of a thin part.

"Betrayal" is based on Pinter's actual, years-long tryst with BBC reporter Joan Bakewell. Bakewell has said that the fact that he wrote it seemed like a betrayal itself. But what Pinter is most worried about is not really the betrayal of these two marriages. Emma may seem like the center of the story — the other two characters are her husband and her lover, after all — but "Betrayal" is not really about her. She's just a stand-in for the women in the men's lives. (The other woman, Jerry's husband Judith, is never seen.)

Instead, the deep heartbreak here is centered around Jerry and Robert's friendship. They worry over the next time they'll see each other, whether they'll ever play squash again, and how long they've been keeping this big secret from each other. The affair is wounding to Robert. But the betrayal of the friendship? That's devastating. 

Betrayal by Harold Pinter, directed by Jamie Lloyd, at the Jacobs Theatre through Dec. 8.