Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming, directed by Peter Hall for the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre in London in 1965, instantly became notorious. Audiences were bewildered by the plot and shocked by its amorality, misogyny and vicious cruelty. Today, the play is considered by many to be Pinter’s masterpiece.
Teddy (Robert Emms), a Doctor of Philosophy at an American university, returns to his family home in London with his wife, Ruth (Lisa Diveney). An academic campus is not her natural habitat. London’s Soho is where her life as a model began and where she belongs.
Teddy’s family consists of his father Max (Jared Harris), ex-criminal and ex-butcher, his uncle Sam (Nicolas Tennant), a servile chauffeur, and his two younger brothers, Lenny (Joe Cole), a voluble pimp, and Joey (David Angland), a dim-witted, would-be boxer. The family instantly recognises Ruth for what she is – a whore.
Max shouts a lot but he is completely toothless and no longer frightens his three sons, whom he abused, when they were children. 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.
Ruth is more than a match for this misogynist household. Her sexuality excites and intimidates them all. Cool, enigmatic, business-like, effortlessly superior, she manoeuvrers herself into a position where she will be in complete control of her life. The men are emasculated. Ruth needs a much stronger-willed performance than she gets here.
Rich in irony and ambiguity, Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming offers possibilities for many interpretations. I have seen the play many times and have always thought it amongst his best. Not this time, though. The present revival suffers from miscasting in certain roles and a poor production on a thrust stage by Matthew Dunster.
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