By Nick Stark
VENICE BEACH might seem a world away from the dreary realities of British life which Harold Pinter was so adept at creating, but a new production of his landmark 1964 play The Homecoming at the Pacific Resident Theatre proves yet again that great drama is not only timeless, it can also travel well.
The Homecoming really put Pinter on the map on an international level, and creates a world that is now known by the shorthand ‘Pinteresque’. Set in a dingy London home in working class neighborhood, the play centers on the vicious antagonism between four men sharing a house. The retired patriarch of the family, Max, his two sons Lenny (who appears to be a pimp) and Teddy (a laborer-cum boxer) and Max’s brother Sam (a chauffeur). From the opening exchanges between the embittered Max and the archly sarcastic Lenny, we know we are in for dysfunction with a capital D. In every encounter in the house’s rundown living room, these four men are always trying to prove something; to gain the upper hand in their exchanges. Max and Lenny are overtly aggressive and caustic, but Teddy and Sam more than hold their own, albeit more obliquely.
Into this fetid and combustible world comes a third brother, Joey, back from America and his civilized life as a professor of philosophy on some unnamed American campus, together with his wife Ruth. From their covert arrival in dead of night Pinter makes clear that pitching a woman into this bleakly male atmosphere can only create even more conflict, and so it proves, with Lenny zeroing in quickly on Ruth, but he is surprised to find that she is capable of giving as good as she gets.
In typical Pinter style the play is rife with pregnant pauses and freighted with double meanings. Yet it’s deeply sinister and menacing undercurrents are frequently leavened with laugh-out-loud humor. Either way, you are waiting for something bizarre to happen, and it does, in spades, midway through the second act in a development which not only could not have been foreseen but which inevitably leads to more questions than answers at the final curtain.
Jude Ciccolella anchors the proceedings as the viciously irascible Max, while the scheming Lenny is played with astute modulation by Jason Downs. Anthony Foux adds an ambigous touch to the possibly homosexual brother, Sam while Trent Dawson is more of a cypher as Teddy, whose passivity at the dramatic upending of his life inevitably leaves you wondering what the hell he is thinking. And then there is Lesley Fera as Ruth, whose uses her undaunted physicality to dominate the men, who can go from coarsely misogynistic to completely cowed in the blink of an eye. Far from realizing our early fears of Ruth being a harmless naïf thrown to the wolves, by the play’s final scene she is clearly in charge, regally reposing in ‘Max’s’ chair, clearly queen of her domain, which is, in her mind, the more depraved the better.
Director Guillermo Cienfuegos proves adroit in both conjuring up the squalid and claustrophobic world Pinter has created here, and in balancing the currents and counter-currents of the characters’ ongoing power struggle. This play is atmospheric, creepy, unsettling, funny and disgusting. After two hours with these folks you are ready to go home and take a shower. Which means they are doing their job.
The Homecoming at the Pacific Resident Theatre, 703 Venice Blvd., Venice. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sunday. No performance July 4. Ends July 26. $25-$34. www.pacificresidenttheatre.com. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.
