Athenaeum II, Melbourne
With a top notch-cast, this Australian Shakespeare Company production never strains for relevance; it lets the audience do the work
UK playwright Harold Pinter was the master of a menace that sits so close to the surface, it forms lumps in the carpet. Revolving around intimate domestic dynamics warped by unseen but dreadfully felt forces of animosity and repression, his plays have never lost their power to unsettle and suggest. The Homecoming premiered in 1965 during a time of massive social upheaval, when sexual mores and gender expectations were in flux, and it responded to an anxiety about men and women that should feel less familiar to us than it does. There is a vertiginous sense of time collapsing while watching this revival; surely we didn’t come home for this?
The homecoming of the title belongs, at least on first impression, to Teddy (Peter Houghton), one of three sons to ageing north London ex-butcher Max (Richard Piper). Teddy has been away in the US for six years, married now to Ruth (Kate Kendall); the couple have three boys of their own, and while he speaks of marital happiness and family reunions, it’s clear something’s seriously wrong. For a start, Ruth becomes sexually suggestive with Teddy’s lecherous brother Lenny (Ben Geurens) almost the moment they meet, and seems thoroughly unconcerned when other members of the family alternately paw and vilify her. It’s almost as if she’s the one coming home to a dynamic she’s determined to change.
Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads