THE HOMECOMING. To 22 March.
London.
THE HOMECOMING
by Harold Pinter.
Almeida Theatre To 22 March 2008.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 3pm. & 5, 12 March 2.30pm.
Audio-described 15 March 3pm.
BSL Signed 6 March.
Captioned 20 March.
Runs 2hr One interval.
TICKETS: 020 7359 4404.
www.almeida.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 8 February.
Dark, brooding, comic, gripping.
This 1965 play is the last full-length Pinter reflecting his East End Londoner’s upbringing, though it does so though a large old North London home where family binds five men of two generations. But there’s tension in the ties, visible between the two older men, Kenneth Cranham’s vicious Max, stout stick raised within the opening moments, seated king-of-the-castle-like in his dead-centre black-leather armchair, unkempt and grizzled.
And Anthony O’Donnell’s Sam, neat in chauffeur’s uniform, taking a pride in his job, but always subservient. Later, he watches impotent, in silent concern, till his final fatal interjection.
Among the younger generation, Joey may be the boxer (amateur, after work) but it’s Lenny who’s the Face round here, who has the silent command, manipulates the way things go and pushes ideas. Nigel Lindsay’s onto him from the off, and outsteps the one who got away, Teddy. Neil Dudgeon gives Ted enough of the shared background to know what’s going on, but not the steeliness to control it, while Lindsay lends Lenny a dangerous unpredictability, a ruthlessness that speaks through and behind his words.
The title’s both accurate, as Teddy turns up from his American university with his wife Ruth, and deeply ironic. Neither house nor family offers a home as the dynamics reverberate through the all-male residents of a household where the mother died years before. That makes for further iron when the four men, fresh from the all-male ritual of cigar-lighting as act two opens, decide to assimilate Ruth among them. It’s when they come up against a female, their assurance slips.
It takes several steps for them to decide she should become a prostitute. Then they’re wrongfooted as she soaks up their confident arrangements, sleekly returning them adapted to her own terms with a feminine assertiveness they can’t handle. Jenny Jules gives Ruth an aptly quiet confidence, though her speech doesn’t share the men’s more realistic flow - maybe because, unlike the others, everything she says is carefully prepared.
At all events, director Michael Attenborough has added a bleakly impressive Pinter to his recent run of ‘living-room’ revivals at the Almeida.
Max: Kenneth Cranham.
Lenny: Nigel Lindsay.
Sam: Anthony O’Donnell.
Joey: Danny Dyer.
Teddy: Neil Dudgeon.
Ruth: Jenny Jules.
Director: Michael Attenborough.
Designer: Jonathan Fensom.
Lighting: Neil Austin.
Sound: John Leonard.
Fight arranger: Terry King.
Assistant director: Nadia Latif.
2008-02-13 11:00:52