Robert Tanitch reviews The Homecoming at Trafalgar Studios, London SW1
Jamie Lloyd celebrates the 50th birthday of The Homecoming with a highly stylized and totally non-realistic production. Sparse set, tableaux, loud music and black-outs increase the artificiality without diminishing the brutal amorality in any way.
For many people The Homecoming is Harold Pinter’s masterpiece. Rich in irony and ambiguity, the script offers possibilities for many interpretations.
Max, ex-criminal, lives with his brother, Sam, a prim chauffeur, and his two sons, Lenny, a violent pimp and Joey, a dumb boxer.
Their late mother, who had been on the game, was the backbone of the family and she had taught her boys all the morality they knew.
Teddy, the eldest son, a Doctor of Philosophy, returns from America with his wife, Ruth. The household immediately recognises her for what she is – a whore.
Ruth, unhappy with the aridity of academia and the boredom of her marriage, prefers to be a poule de luxe in London and a surrogate mother to her husband’s family.
Always effortlessly superior, refusing to be intimidated, Ruth manoeuvres herself into a position where she is in complete control. Gemma Chan has the two major requisites for the role – she is enigmatic and she has a good pair of legs
The men are emasculated.
Ron Cook is in top form as the brutish, vindictive Max, a master of bile, who no longer frightens his three sons, whom he most certainly did not father and whom he abused when they were children.
John Simm is very Pinteresque as the streetwise Lenny, who beats up old ladies and takes the Mickey. Lenny is all smiles; but the smiles have no warmth and the colloquial language is lethal.
Keith Allen as Sam, who knows a thing or two about Max’s late wife that Max doesn’t know, is also well cast.
To learn more about Robert Tanitch, click here to go to his website
