Cast

Synopsis

“They’re very warm people, really. Very warm. They’re my family, they’re not ogres.” Teddy, a professor in an American university, returns to his childhood home accompanied by his wife, Ruth, to find his father, uncle and brothers still living there. Her presence ignites an explosive situation, one that is vicious, funny, and unsettling. In the subsequent series of encounters, life becomes a barely camouflaged battle for power and sexual supremacy fought out with taut verbal brutality. Who will emerge victorious – the poised and elegant Ruth or her husband’s dysfunctional family?

Directors Notes

The Homecoming is widely regarded as Pinter’s finest play, a classic of the Twentieth Century. A disturbing and very dark comedy, the action centres on six characters in one room, as we bear witness to one of the most dysfunctional families that you will ever see. It is testosterone fuelled family warfare, just as shocking today as it was 60 years ago.

In a house riddled by misogyny, Ruth, the outsider, disrupts the balance of power by playing off the weaknesses in each of the men, using her sexuality as a tool of domination and destruction.

Audiences are never sure what to make of Pinter’s work and this play is no exception. It had a mixed reception upon opening and still causes much discussion and debate. It has clearly elements of Absurdist theatre: taking place in a single space, dialogue marked by non sequiturs and disconnects, characters often speaking lines that seem to disappear into the void, without sparking reactions from other characters.

The characters in The Homecoming fight for power and control, conveying a struggle centred around space. Pinter’s specific use of language complicates our notion of space, addressing not only physical space, but also verbal space, how much conversation a specific character takes up, or doesn’t take up.

I think it is a brilliantly dark but funny piece of theatre that will appal and amuse in equal measure, like all the best dramas. Whose Homecoming is it? Teddy’s? Ruth’s? Or is it simply the chickens coming home to roost?

I’ll let you decide.