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Kenneth Cranham in the Homecoming |
Reading between the lines of a Pinter classic
THE HOMECOMING
AlmeidaTheatre
LIKE every classic, a new production always brings a new twist. Michael Attenborough has stamped his mark on Pinter’s dystopic family portrait by casting a black actor, Jenny Jules, as the seductive and disruptive Ruth.
When she returns to London with Teddy (Neil Dudgeon), her philosophy professor husband, to visit his family, their world is turned upside down. Making her black almost raises the bounty on her head. For whoever sways her – successful academic husband or white working-class extended family – the coup is even more significant.
But perhaps the greatest thing about this production is that in a family imploding with testosterone, it is Ruth – apparently a victim by her very design – who holds all the cards.
Sam, played with measured gravitas by Kenneth Cranham, a bilious patriarch and sentimentalist is completely in the throes of Ruth, whose sudden entrance into his grey London front room is probably too much for him to stomach.
And then there are his two sons: Lenny (Nigel Lindsay), a sharp suited misogynistic pimp, and Joey an emotionally repressed wannabe boxer, unironically played by wannabe cockney Danny Dyer.
They too fall victim to Ruth’s charms – which shakes the very foundations of family life in a household where family values are sacrosanct.
Now I’m sure a lot of women would contest that Ruth’s choice to abandon her successful husband to become a working girl in Soho is not exactly a story of female emancipation.
But with Pinter, it is what is unsaid that is all-important.
Why would Ruth, who is in control from the second she steps through the threshold, be bullied into being a prostitute?
As the metaphorical curtain falls, it is left to the audience to decide what becomes of Ruth and her adopted family.
She has made the choice to leave Teddy for the allure of a drab London terrace, but it is the second choice that is most intriguing.
Will she really become a prostitute or is she just calling their bluff?
Until March 22
020 7359 4404
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