Pinter Dissects a Combative Family

Sun Dec 16, 2007 7:00 PM EST

entertainment, theater, homecoming, harold-pinter

NEW YORK — Just in time for the holidays comes another bilious family reunion: a revival of "The Homecoming," Harold Pinter's masterful, acid-etched portrait of a tyrannical father and his three sons, undone by a savvy, sexually aware woman.

Now well into middle age, the play (first seen on Broadway in 1967) remains one of Pinter's most durable works, and this admirable production, which opened Sunday at the Cort Theatre, reconfirms its status as a contemporary classic.

Directed by Daniel Sullivan with careful attention to detail (particularly to all those celebrated Pinter "pauses" or moments of silence), "The Homecoming" is, among other things, an eerie, uncomfortable examination of male combativeness, a fraternity of one-upmanship that finally meets its match in the appearance of a female outsider.

But like most Pinter creations, "The Homecoming" defies easy analysis. The play keeps its audience off-kilter, reveling in a sinister yet often humorous uncertainty that persists through its still shocking conclusion.

The setting is a shabby house in North London — designer Eugene Lee's living room is the epitome of drabness — where Max, the father, lords over two of his offspring, Lenny, a pimp, and Joey, a slow-witted, aspiring boxer. Max also emotionally pummels his own brother, Sam, a chauffeur, who also lives with them.

They taunt each other and frequently draw blood. Max, the chief tormentor, is portrayed with a pugilistic ferocity by the marvelous Ian McShane. It's no wonder Max was a butcher (now retired) by trade. McShane not only exudes a compelling physical bravado, he handles Pinter's often razor-sharp dialogue with the dexterity of a skilled surgeon.

This antagonistic all-guy environment is interrupted by the unexpected arrival from America of Max's third son, Teddy, a philosophy professor, and his wife, Ruth. Teddy is surprisingly mild mannered; Ruth, unnervingly enigmatic and self-contained.

It makes for a combustible situation, particularly after Ruth is invited to stay on at the family homestead and, with a little help from Lenny, ply her trade in town.

Eve Best was a sensational Josie Hogan last season in a revival of Eugene O'Neill's "A Moon for the Misbegotten." As Ruth, she's a different kind of earth mother, more erotically charged, yet distant and forbidding. In this battle of the sexes, she definitely has the upper hand. And gets to display a great pair of legs.

James Frain turns in a fine, deceptively understated performance as her acquiescent husband, and Gareth Saxe personifies dumb brute strength as the would-be prize fighter. They even look as if they might be brothers. And Michael McKean finds exactly the right amount of fussiness in Sam, a chauffeur who takes pride in his work.

More problematic is Raul Esparza, whose rushed, high-pitched delivery often is at odds with the other actors in the production. While his English accent never wavers and he physically gets the creepiness that permeates Lenny, Esparza seems uncomfortable with the deliberate, exacting nature of Pinter's language.

And in Pinter, language is all. From such early works as "The Room" and "The Caretaker" right up through more recent efforts such as "Moonlight" and "Ashes to Ashes," linguistic clarity is imperative. Even if an exact meaning can't always be discerned, the theatricality of how Pinter says it can't be denied. And in "The Homecoming," that ambiguity packs quite a wallop.