Pinter’s The Homecoming is one of the writer’s most accessible works, requiring the least decoding outside the core story set in a bristling domestic world run entirely by men. But while the temptation might be to assume that the essential purpose is all brooding masculinity and meaningful pauses, there is far more to Pinter’s play than that, showcasing the writer’s great skill as both a poet and a linguist. The scenario that he constructs in The Homecoming is strongly character-driven, couched in a particular experience of working class manliness in the era of the play. It emerges from the experience of two different generations across the twentieth-century as alternative ways of living contend, and in which the absence of a matriarch has shaped the blurring of traditional gender roles in ways that feel transgressive for 1965. Pinter’s creation of the male voice in the play, the very particular rhythm of their banter, the degree of over-familiarity with one another within a family and the obsession with identity-forming storytelling is extraordinarily sharp in Matthew Dunster’s production for the Young Vic which opens this week.
The last major production of The Homecoming was strikingly different, a Jamie Lloyd treatment full of warped bombast, a black and red vision of masculine intensity that had Lloyd’s trademark heightened but revelatory style. Superb as that was back in 2015, Dunster opts for something more naturalistic, placing the play and the relationships that Pinter creates in a more recognisable setting to draw out the levels of relatability in the story. It is a different kind of power to the one that Lloyd elicited, and one that brings a strong resonance to tone and technique in the writing, where every word may feel casual and insignificant, even tangential, but it is carefully chosen to convey a particular meaning, suggest a cultural and class-based backstory and to explore the ways in which vocabulary and sentence structure alter behaviour and perspective.
The words are immensely important in Pinter’s writing and Dunster’s 130-minute production which includes the interval, makes plenty of space for them to emerge and hang in the air. This is a play not just about men but about brothers and about fathers and sons, so what they say to each other has added purpose – rarely is it instructive or merely conversational but instead become weapons of power and control over one another, used to re-establish dynamics of authority, emphasise longevity and experience as well as to belittle and demean. That this occurs in the family context creates opportunities for Pinter to introduce different types of contextual short-hand, showing the audience where the weak spots are, how each individual reacts when pressed into a corner and the ingrained reaction to each other’s speech. Sometimes there is fight in these conversations, notably a pedantic desire to correct each other’s grammar or pick holes in a story, and other times there is just silence, individuals pretending not to listen in order to goad the speaker.
When the characters speak to one another in the play their linguistic choices and delivery tell us much about the kind of man they are and their background. Patriarch Max frequently loses himself in stories of his glory years, when he was a young man to be reckoned with and his quick temper erupts throughout the play. Yet Pinter gives him many speeches about being a doting dad, a widower who almost fondly recalls bathing his children and caring for them, even opening the play with demands from the household that he cook their dinner. This impression that Max wants to give of violence and power, the head of a family that has disappointed him is constantly undercut by these domestic and maternal duties. And Dunster’s homely thrust staging, designed by Moi Tran, creates that world of economised comfort and good order that underpins the words that Pinter gives to these men to talk about themselves.
And they often talk in stories, self-mythologised anecdotes designed to convey a particular impression of the speaker for the person they are trying to impress. Max reels off several stories to his middle son Lenny while the latter attempts to convey his own careless power to new arrival Ruth, the sister-in-law who arrives out of the blue. And again Pinter holds these two things in tension, the contrast between what these men say about themselves and how they really behave, responding to the shifting authority within the household as Ruth, the classic Pinter interloper, disrupts the status quo. There is a real clarity about that in Dunster’s production in this large living room set where characters can be close up and far apart, a dance the director has them weave around one another as they try to convince Ruth they are a force to be reckoned with while still fixing her drinks and smoothing out the antimacassars. What is really interesting about this interpretation of The Homecoming is the recognition that male-dominated though the plays may be on the surface, Pinter actually gives the real power to women.
Dunster’s approach really brings out the importance of Max’s wife Jessie and the vast absence that her death has left behind. These are throw away references in the text, she is mentioned a number of times but Pinter leaves the audience to connect the dots, assuming that the men have learned to take care of themselves without her. In reality they are waiting for someone like Ruth to take over the household, not to cook, clean and potentially prostitute herself to pay for her keep as they intend, but to control and manage them. Dunster makes this clear in the centrality he gives to Jessie’s absence in the play, keeping a single chair vacant throughout, a sacred place that no one is willing to touch. Both Lenny and elder brother Teddy sit briefly in their father’s chair when he is not in the room, actively and aggressively asserting themselves against his authority by doing so, but the three brothers including youngest son Joey, Max and Uncle Sam continually look to Jessie’s empty seat throughout often without realising their eye is drawn to it, physically hovering close by but never daring to sit as though eager for her approval and fearing it would be denied them.
And it casts the gendered relationships in the play in a different light as a result. Dunster leaves the audience to question whether Max’s family was always this way and hasn’t recently assumed ‘feminine’ duties because Jessie died. Does Max’s comment about bathing the children now suggest he was left to do most of the childcare because his wife was really in control? The ease with which Ruth casts a spell over the men certainly reinforces this possibility and, again, it is notable in this controlled but spacious production that their words are full of intent to govern her when she is out of the room, determining ownership of her body and its function, but they quickly bow to her when she returns, fixing their eyes on her as they do the vacant chair and complying with her demands. The ending as a result becomes more terrible, the realisation in the dying moments of the play all the clearer for subtly reinforcing the female power base that really underpins the dynamic in this household.
And it is through the continued presence of Jessie that the audience is able to access another important dimension to both The Homecoming and to Pinter’s work more broadly which examines this interplay between memory and periods of transition which, whether the characters recognise it or not, defines their status within the drama. In Dunster’s production, time seems to stand still, a group of men locked into a fixed routine, a cycle of waiting that is about to be broken by Ruth who represents their future and the past simultaneously, evoking memories of Jessie. Yet through the sexualisation of her relationship with all of the family members it takes them into a new phase of life. Although The Homecoming is not a memory play per se, its reliance on remembrances to construct character and the way memories are used to reinforce power dynamics is really important. Why else does Lenny tell the story of a woman he rejected at the dockside, Sam talks about Jessie riding in the back of his car or, crucially, Ruth mentioning a modelling assignment in the countryside except to create a particular effect in the present, one that reinforces the allure, influence or physicality they want their conversation partner to respond to.
In designing this into the production, Tran uses lighting effects to create and mark out these moments of illusion, blending fragile mint colours that give the stage a ghostly effect with stark square cut outs that highlight significant beats and changes of direction. The cast too respond to these physical alterations in the environment by heightening or relaxing their performance as the mood and intensity develop across the story with the central trio, Lisa Diveney’s Ruth, Jared Harris’s Max and Joe Cole’s Lenny brilliantly providing the central power play. Harris throws off some of his reputation for poised, well-spoken characters with a gruff working-class masculinity, an irascible older man sensing his waning physical and manipulative power as a younger, more virile generation seeks to take his place. It is a classic Pinter trope, and Harris creates that stage dominance, snapping and shouting at his sons, continually demanding the respect he feels he has earned as the family elder for which his memory stories are indicative. The glee Harris’s Max evokes as plans for Ruth come together offers a nice range to this performance before Max is broken by the well-staged conclusion.
Cole, likewise, is very comfortable on this stage, channeling a nimble Danny Dyer in his use of menace that disguises itself behind comedy and sarcasm. That Lenny is part of a much bigger, seedy underworld is hinted at throughout the play and Cole clearly revels in the playful danger of Lenny, an intimidating presence, often announced by his shadow appearing from another room before launching into monologues that look to secure his dominance. There is great nuance here too, an introversion or at least a holding back in the presence of his father while Lenny’s responses to Ruth are possessive but ultimately all talk, eyeing her as a leader by the end of the play.
The presentation of Ruth is essential if The Homecoming is to work and Diveney brings just the right balance of fear and flirtation as she manoeuvers her way into the household. It is entirely ambiguous whether this is a deliberate plan from the outset or an opportunistic one, but the steely strength in Diveney’s Ruth turns all situations to her advantage. This is a character who uses her beauty and desirability to gain control so Diveney peppers her performance with warm and inviting smiles to all of the men as she passes them, yet appears grave and in awe, even frightened at other times. Ruth never concedes, even on whether she has finished a glass of water, and this watchful performance completes the predatory nature of the central trio.
The smaller roles – David Angland as Joey, Robert Emms as Teddy and Nicholas Tennant as Sam – are just as accomplished, filling out the ensemble family dynamic with performances that emphasise their own needs while facilitating the behaviours of others, and are vital to the maintenance of tone in Dunster’s engaging and illuminating production. Most of all, this version of The Homecoming showcases and revels in Pinter’s mastery of language and its application, every word thrumming with significance even before all of the tricks of the theatre are applied to staging this great play.
The Homecoming is at the Young Vic until 27 January with tickets from £10. Follow this site on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook Cultural Capital Theatre Blog
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