Marital infidelity is that slippery slope, just ask the characters in Harold Pinter’s Betrayal in a superb revival at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater. Coming from a fictional literary elite, meaning they are also verbally gifted, and would have to be for Pinter’s poetry, Jerry (Charlie Cox) and Emma (Zawe Ashton) think they’ve gotten away with a seven -year affair when they meet up two years after their trysts ended. A book agent and a gallerist, they’ve been cheating on Robert, her publisher husband (Tom Hiddleston), who is also his best friend. Got that? Famously for this Pinter play, the events unravel backwards in time, much being made of when and how the betrayed know what. The truth is slippery.

A number of memorable Betrayal productions have landed on Broadway. Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz and Rafe Spall starred in one, and Juliet Binoche, Liev Schreiber and John Slattery in another. Stunning in this latest revival is how much the spare set becomes a world that excludes anything but them. As two speak, the third lopes about, present in absence, or absent in presence. Tom Hiddleston provides a lithe elegance. Same is true of Emma who sits in a man spread, her long limbs in denim, wide. Betrayal’s a venue for big stars, and after, crowds thronged outside the stage door for Tom Hiddleston, “Loki” from the movie Thor.

East of Broadway, the stage door for the Hudson Theater gives onto 45^th street, and another crowd assembled there for Jake Gyllenhaal and Tom Sturridge, each in a riveting if sad monologue about loss, back to back, Sea Wall/ A Life. The set is spare too, just an endless wall on which an agile actor can perch. The one-man shows, Sea Wall by Simon Stephens and A Life by Nick Payne, show the work of these young actors at their best. Well known, they are catnip for the young, and while it may seem that so much is going wrong with the world outside, in theater, a robust make-believe provides hope.