30 March – 9 April

Considered by many to be Pinter’s theatrical magnum opus, The Homecoming certainly permits of a wide variety of interpretations which allow the director to tune his production accordingly. In this revival the director, Jamie Glover, does not shy away from complexity whilst giving a full rendering of the central themes of family, sex and loss which are explored with the return of the ineffectual family intellectual, Teddy (Sam Alexander), with his enigmatic wife.

For anyone who thinks that family is the bedrock of society this play will come like a dowsing with a bucket of iced water. Pinter’s family is a kind of parody of the wholesome nurturing nest beloved of politicians and clerics. The idea that, as Max (Keith Allen) infers, morality is learned at our mothers’ knees, forces us to have a good long look in the mirror to see just what it is we are learning. Max’s family is neither bedrock nor entirely crumbling for the fact is it is still there; despite the visceral antagonisms and petty animosities it is still together. Nevertheless, Mr Allen’s foul-mouthed patriarch is shown as a shadow of the swaggering bully he paints himself as having been. His one attempt at the kind of physical prowess he brags about finds him on the floor, exhausted by the exertion. His loss is that authority which once was his, both as a father and as is hinted, a feared member of the underworld community.

Mathew Horne’s Lenny, every inch the slick misogynistic sadist, is the repugnant seed that has fallen close to the tree. He is the archetype of the man who’d break his granny’s arm for a five pound note.

Whilst Max is happy to declare that Ruth is one of the family, Lenny is happy to pimp her. At the same time Ruth begins to take on the role of the deceased Jesse, the real matriarch of the family who was quite willing to cuckold Max in the back of the luxury car of his chauffeur brother Sam (Ian Bartholomew).