As we’ve been reminded in rather spectacular fashion by the David Petraeus scandal, marital infidelity is one of the oldest, most durable stories there is. Only the names change.

The twist Harold Pinter added to that venerable story in 1978’s “Betrayal,’’ of course, was to tell it backward, employing reverse chronology to delineate the unspooling of a seven-year affair between a married woman and her husband’s best friend, also married.