Programme Cover |
The Homecoming, Comedy Theatre,
London, January 1990
Max - Warren Mitchell
Lenny - Nicholas Woodeson
Sam - John Normington
Joey - Douglas McFerran
Teddy - Greg Hicks
Ruth - Cherie Lungh
Directed by Peter Hall
Sets, Costumes, Lighting - John Bury
A Pinter classic revisited
by Benedict Nightingale
Twenty-five years have passed since Harold Pinterís Homecoming
had its premiere in Cardiff. I know because I was there, and well
remembered scribbling a quick-fire review in a hotel lounge crammed
with theatregoers either spluttering, expostulating or too stricken
to do much but silently mouth. That did not make life calmer for
a cub critic struggling to make instant sense of one of the centuryís
strangest, most fascinating plays. But South Walesís outrage is
worth recalling, now that academia has institutionalised The
Homecoming as that deathly thing, a modern classic.
Thus the task facing Peter Hall, now as then the playís director,
is almost more challenging than in 1965. He must switch the electricity
back on, and jolt a modern audience into recognising how shocking
the play still is. It should not just be an opportunity for the
cognoscenti to appreciate charged dialogue, pregnant subtext and
other Pinterisms. It is the story of an academic who brings his
wife from America to London, only to see her sexually hijacked by
his father and brothers and, with her consent, turned into a blend
of housekeeper and breadwinner, surrogate mother and professional
whore.
Hall undeniably passes the test. True, there are plenty of loaded
silences; but there is no doubting the intensity of the emotions
embodied in them. What this family is camouflaging, and not always
bothering to camouflage, are lust, greed, envy, fear and anger.
If the production did not also manage to be gruesomely funny, it
would be intolerable. London, let alone Cardiff, should beware.
Warren Mitchell, Greg Hicks,
Cherie Lunghi, Douglas McFerran and Nicholas Woodeson
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The family living room, as in 1965
designed by John Bury, consists of drab grey walls and dull brown
furniture. Even the lampshade might have been rescued from the ashes
of Hiroshima. And then the rancorous exchanges begin. In Warren
Mitchellís performance, the paterfamilias Max half-limps, half-scuttles
onstage, a boy gnome with sly, squinting eyes and a malevolent grin.
Before long, he is barking out resentments that embrace his own
increasing age and fading virility, his dead wife, his conventional
brother, and his young sons.
One of these is the pimp Lenny, in Nicholas Woodesonís performance
a sly, mocking predator, and the other the aspiring boxer Joey,
played by Douglas McFerran as a simpleton most articulate when he
is staring at his father with helpless hatred or at his sister-in-law
with forlorn yearning. This is the all-male household to which the
eldest brother, Teddy, ends by presenting his compliant wife, Ruth.
Here is the playís central problem. Why does this classy couple
behave so weirdly? In the first production, Vivien Merchantís Ruth
exuded slinky sexuality and nostalgie de la boue. Cherie
Lunghi, her pale, drawn successor, prefers to emphasise the strain
of being a good wife and mother on an arid American campus, and
the relief of being somewhere where she can exercise emotional power,
not play games of intellectual letís-pretend. Given her determination,
itís not surprising that Greg Hickís Teddy, always insecure behind
the professorial suavity, finds relief in surrender.
So why does the play maintain its hold? Surely because it utterly
demystifies the family. God knows what formative brutalities have
happened in the past; but what is left here is a herd of human animals,
loveless yet frighteningly close, whose joint needs override those
of any one member. Who but Pinter could bring such zoological dispassion
to the recording of its internal battles for dominance and sex,
its power to absorb, overwhelm and destroy
The Times, 11th January 1991
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