The Homecoming

In case there’s any doubt about Harold Pinter’s continued power to discomfort audiences, particularly here in London, we need only look to the Young Vic’s current staging of The Homecoming (1964) and its accompanying, downloadable “Show Warnings,”1 a list so comprehensive in its promise to offend that some of us should be forgiven for having anticipated the best theatrical experience of our lives. Of course, the stewards of our safety at the Young Vic might have simply pronounced at the start homo homini lupus—“man is wolf to man”—and left it there, our preshow imaginings ripened and primed for abuse.Simpler still: Caution, Pinter Ahead!Instead, they’ve elected to take the long way, informing us that the show contains: “Themes of misogyny and gender stereotypes; Strong language including explicit sexual language and sexist slurs; Threats of violence and murder, particularly violence against women; References to rape, sexual slavery, and scenes of a sexual nature; Scenes of physical violence and onstage death; Derogatory language about sex workers; Ableist language.”As rap sheets go, it’s remarkable for its breadth and is almost certain to convict. But if putting The Homecoming in the dock before the first act risks taking the piss out of the whole play, it at least has the advantage of reflecting the modus operandi of our cultural moment. Specifically, in taking stock of all the ways we might be offended, we can be better assured, down the road, of the pleasure of having been offended. Surprisingly, though, the Young Vic offers no warnings to the possible sexists in attendance who are certain to be rocked if not traumatized by the sight of pasty, truth-challenged men brought literally to their knees by Ruth (Lisa Diveney), the only female in the play.Pinter’s abuse, in other words, is nothing if not inclusive.None of these content warnings, however, can be pinned on the director, Matthew Dunster, whose previous credits include 2:22 A Ghost Story, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shirley Valentine, and The Pillowman, and whose present rendering of The Homecoming is played to the letter (script-wise), albeit loudly, rapidly, with Max (Jared Harris) and Sam (Nicolas Tennant) at times so red in the face that I feared imminent strokes for both. In fact, the real possibility of actual onstage death struck me as reason enough for an addendum to the show warnings, post haste.If the muck I’m raking about these show warnings strikes some as a bit much, overblown even, then I understand. I do. After all, such warnings have increasingly become standard fare for theatres everywhere and, to be fair, are, in the case of the Young Vic, tucked two-clicks deep on its website (among a host of other FYIs likely to go unnoticed by all but a few curious theatregoers). Besides, what’s the harm, you may be thinking, in a preemptive strike against all the ways in which The Homecoming may harm us? Moreover, what’s the harm in distilling, or trying to distill, the sheer otherness of Pinter’s play into a series of identifiable offenses so that we can better manage our emotions, never mind know in advance just what to condemn in the behavior of the characters on stage to get the upper hand? “Mental pleasure, and ecstasy of any kind,” Thomas Hobbes reminds us, “arise when, on comparing ourselves with others, we come to the conclusion that we may think well of ourselves” (qtd. in Schopenhaur).Perhaps the only harm, if harm there is, is if we fail to see these content warnings for what they also are, i.e., a Pinterian stratagem par excellence by which getting the upper hand is the only game in town—as when, toward the end of the play, Lenny (Joe Cole) attempts to get the upper hand of Ruth by plotting to put her “on the game.” Whether as footnote or fine print, these content warnings function, from a Pinterian point of view, as the weasel under the cocktail cabinet, a sly assertion of power—like the pinching of a cheese roll—which excites our innate sense of victimhood as well as our retributive aggressivity toward others. Call it—I don’t know—barefaced audacity.In any case, if it’s a safe space you’re looking for—that you think you deserve and therefore have come to expect—then you most definitely have turned up at the wrong door of the wrong north London house at the wrong South Bank theatre. Here, in this house, survival depends, in Max’s words, on learning how to defend yourself and learning how to attack. Those who are deficient in such skills, like Joey (David Angland), are doomed to linger at the bottom of a pecking order governed—whether we like it or not, whether we accept it or not—by power, insinuation, one-upmanship, control, domination, and, yes, virtue-signaling.It may turn out, however, that the content of The Homecoming is the least of your concerns. Have I mentioned the “production warnings”? Together, director (Dunster) and designer (Moi Tran) are positively Beckettian in their efforts to achieve a production that (in Beckett’s words) works on the nerves of the audience, not its intellect. To that end, we get the following advisories: “Haze (this will be particularly heavy at the beginning of each act); Sudden blackouts; Loud and sudden jazz music during scene changes; Loud and sudden drumming sound effects; Shouting; Smoke from stage cigars and cigarettes that contain no tobacco or nicotine; Steam from replica fireplace.”In short, buckle up!Once the house doors are open—those of the Vic’s, of Max’s—we hear the hard bop of Art Blakey’s “A Night in Tunisia” (1961) blasting, its nervous energy, driven by Blakey’s frenetic drumming, effectively setting the mood and tempo of the action, the dialogue, indeed of the shouting to follow. We also encounter upon entering the house the warned-about haze that is heavy enough to make breathing a chore, a serious hazard, I imagine, for the asthmatic or otherwise weak-lunged. But the haze has its purposes. Not only does it function as a curtain before both acts, dissipating (though not entirely) to reveal an ashtray-laden interior where nearly every character will at some point light up, but it also functions to acculturate the audience to the two-plus hours of claustrophobic choking they’ll witness onstage. Additionally, the thick haze conjures, atmospherically, the London of popular imagination (think Dickens’s Bleak House: “Fog everywhere”) as well as, importantly, Pinter’s recurring theme (throughout all his work) about our inability to ever get clear of the truth, of distinguishing it from illusion, especially where the past is concern. After all, “the past is a mist,” a character from Pinter’s short play Moonlight (1993) tells us. And who, asks Max in The Homecoming, “can afford to live in the past?” There, we’re forever lost in a fog.The directorial emphasis on Spectacle—the loud and sudden jazz score, the sudden blackouts, the loud and sudden drumming, the spotlights, the haze, the smoke, the steam, the red-in-the-face shouting—is likely to rankle Pinter Purists who’ve come principally to hear the play and the quite literal power of its language, punctuated by what should be well-timed pauses and exquisite silences. What they will have gotten instead is a production in which lines are often delivered hurriedly or loudly, or loudly hurriedly, leaving the subtleties, the humor, the subtext lost or muted in a haze of noise. If, though, there’s an ironclad rule of thumb when it comes to directing the work of wordsmiths—whether Shakespeare, Chekhov, or Pinter—it’s this: Trust the language. Too much seasoning (via Spectacle) and the audience will only taste the seasoning.I understand, or at least think I do, the impulse behind the wish for a full theatrical experience whereby both nerves and intellect are appealed to in equal measure, but such a balancing act is never easy, especially when the power of a particular play is dependent on its language, rather than on its ramped-up decibel levels, heavy haze, or imagined soundtrack. Still, despite the overwhelming spectacle of it all, the cast of this production often comes through, and, in the case of Nicolas Tennant, well, he steals the show. As Sam, Tennant adopts just the right disposition of a man successfully schooled on how to defend himself and how to attack. And, tonally, his insinuations always land on the right note of funny.Joe Cole, who plays Lenny, syncopates many of his lines with a thousand-yard stare. His gaze suggests a man haunted by his own misty past, which, for better or worse, adds noticeable depth to a character whose surfaces are usually played in such a way that we, the audience, remain mystified as to what lies beneath.Lisa Diveney, as Ruth, is truly stunning to behold but too posh, too beautiful, to be ever mistaken for or accused of being a smelly scrubber, a dirty tart; and she is, I think, too timid, too demure, in her presence toward the end to make a convincing case of forceful overturning.The would-be boxer Joey is played by David Angland with the precise credibility of someone who spends his off time getting punched in the head.As for Jared Harris’s Max, Pinter fans will have their opinions, and I have mine. But I’ll pose a question instead: Should Max be played with emotional restraint (think Chekhov), such that his insults, insinuations, self-pity, and self-delusion become even more emotionally powerful? Or should he play his role full-throated, full-tilt, blood vessels nearly bursting? Harris opts for the latter.Finally, Teddy, whose homecoming it is, is performed by Robert Emms with a stoic reserve and countervailing passivity (to everyone else’s aggression) that is, in its own way, utterly unnerving—this even during his moment of triumph when he thieves Lenny’s cheese roll.With a talented cast in tow, Matthew Dunster, the Young Vic’s website announces, “directs a bold, spare refocusing of Harold Pinter’s powerful masterpiece.”Bold, indeed.Spare, nothing of the kind.That’s not equivocal, it’s unequivocal.