Lighthearted social dances may once have been a staple of the Saco River Grange Hall. But with the building’s conversion to a cultural arts center a couple of decades back, events there have, from time to time, gotten a little more serious and complex.

Mounting a production of a play by Harold Pinter, as the resident theater group The Originals is now doing, certainly fits the latter category. It’s a valiant effort and a play well worth a trip a few miles off the beaten path to see.

Pinter’s “Betrayal” could be viewed as a sort of intellectual dance among three characters who have been unfaithful to one another, and not only in the sense that first comes to mind.

Set mostly in the 1970s and purported to be based on actual events in the author’s life, the play unfolds in reverse chronology, covering about nine years. Pinter gives us the end of the story first and then backtracks to show us how it all began. It’s a bit of a mind-twister but interestingly so.

The story of marital infidelity among the English upper-middle class concerns an art gallery-owning wife who has an affair with the best friend of her publisher husband. Her lover is a literary agent and there are subtexts of artistic authenticity to go with the personal struggles of the three as they deceive each other and themselves about what they have done or failed to do.

Jennifer Porter and Dana Packard co-directed and also star, along with Rob Cameron, in the 75-minute, nine-scene play. William McDonough III has a small part as a waiter. The sets are simple arrangements of furniture to establish living rooms, restaurants and bedrooms.

The classic Pinteresque clipped and mannered dialogue and the silences between were well-handled at Friday’s opening performance. Cameron, as the aggrieved husband Robert, was particularly good at adding a sense of unease and menace to his conversations with the others.

Porter was effective in the crucial scene in Venice when her affair is first revealed to her husband. At other times, she seemed to be adding maybe just a touch too much sweetness to the role of a woman who has not been all that honest with those she supposedly loves.

Packard makes a slick agent Jerry. He goes hot after what he wants but then seems unsure of what it was he really wanted — or got.

The between-scenes soundtrack features Billie Holiday at her most melancholy and romantic. Her art matches that of Pinter in expressing things that are difficult to put directly into words.

Steve Feeney is a freelance writer who lives in Portland.