The Homecoming (review)

 

Spoilers ahoy!

Tiny confession.  Although having heard of it for years, up until now I had neither read nor seen The Homecoming by the late, great Harold Pinter.  Hence this was an intense treat, to see a play of this caliber for the first time, done by a theatre company on this level...I feel buzzed in the aftermath.

In many ways, the premise (in terms of plot or situation, anyway) is simple, in terms of the play's period, the 1960s, almost cliche.  Teddy (Taylor Lee Marr), a philosophy professor in some American university, returns home to his North London working class home after six years.  This home consists of nothing but four men--Max (Troy Dunn) a cantankerous retired butcher now walking with a cane, his other two sons Lenny (Adam Langsam) who gives off a strange air--one that we eventually realize is "Pimp"--and Joey (Carey Cannata), the youngest in so many ways with hopes of becoming a boxer, and finally Sam (David E. Frank) Max's younger brother who works as a chauffeur.  Teddy arrives without warning in the middle of the night, bringing with him a wife, Ruth (Angela Beyer), about whom no one is his family has any clue at all.

She seems to be the first woman in this house, since the death of Jessie, Max's wife and the boys' mother.  

A lot of things become instantly obvious.  First, this house simmers with tension, unresolved and possibly unresolvable.  Every word it seems is a weapon, or a shield.  Secrets are everywhere, their presence increasingly loud, their specific nature remaining elusive.  

Second, what is true of one home seems utterly true (albeit in a totally different flavor) of the "home" which is Teddy and Ruth's marriage.  We sense instantly here is something afoot, which grows more obvious by the breath.  For several moments in the play I wondered if Ruth had been hired to pretend to be Teddy's wife.  While I dismissed that idea pretty quickly, by now the idea seems more likely--on Ruth was in effect "hired" when she and Teddy did get married six years ago.  Here is not a happy marriage.

Whose homecoming is this?  Teddy's obviously.  But we learn Ruth used to live near here, so might it not be hers as well?  The men of this house begin becoming more obviously themselves, a cascade effect from the introduction of Ruth.  So, one could say they are also coming home, home to themselves.  Little truths spill out.  How Lenny hates being called Leonard, evidently because his mother called him that.  Hints of abuse by Max are sprinkled throughout.  People keep talking about an old friend of Max, and Sam ends up spewing a BIG secret about him.  Joey almost turns infantile by the end.  

Throughout, words rarely reveal anything.  They hint, and tease, deceive and accuse, but hardly anything of import is ever stated clearly.  Everything, every sentence and phrase and word, is an act of combat, or a negotiation.  Life as warfare.  Or, as high stakes poker.  

And this cast, under the direction of Frederique Michel, makes every glance or smile or silence work exactly the same way.  The experience proves eerie, fascinating, a little bit disgusting, often quite funny, and it crawls under one's skin.  I should mention I know about half the cast reasonably well, yet looking at them on stage during this performance I did not see the men and woman I know.  I saw Ruth and Max, Sam and Lenny, Joey and Teddy.

Bravo.

The Homecoming plays Fridays and Saturdays 8:00pm, Sundays at 4:00pm through June 15, 2025 at City Garage, Bergamot Station, T1 Space, 2525 Michigan Ave Santa Monica, CA 90404

Betrayal (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize in literature, which is way impressive.  As a writer he managed to write silences into his plays which were filled with meaning, and forced actors to plumb the text for meanings by having them say the same lines several times.  It makes for quite a challenge--one met magnificently by the latest production of Betrayal by Santa Monica's CityGarage.

Frankly, been looking forward to this ever since they announced it on the schedule and even more when I read the cast.

Essentially, the play tells the story of an affair.  Emma (Angela Beyer) is married to book publisher Robert (David E. Frank) but had/has had a long term affair with his best friend Jerry (Troy Dunn).  If this sounds a little too straightforward, even mundane for Pinter, never you worry.  What follows is a sometimes scorching, sometimes hilarious, always intriguing exploration of human relations.  Aiding in all this is how the scenes generally (but not quite always) proceed in reverse chronological order, namely starting with a meeting years after the affair has ended and ending with the scene in which that new relationship was truly born.  Helping all this is a a character known simply as the Waiter (Gifford Irving) who wanders around the scenes in which his character does not appear simply to tell the audience when what follows happens.

This last is a tiny addition from director Frederique Michel.  Personally, even though I understood the chronology (did the role of Waiter at my University), this helped me keep track.

But what really grabs our attention and hearts are the performances.  Again, Pinter masterfully forces actors to examine what the words coming out of their mouths really mean.  In the hands of these actors, the results often astound.  The meaning of the word "squash" for example changes dramatically as events proceed.  All too often current styles of acting consist of treating lines casually--which in theatre at least nearly always turns out to be a dreadful error.  In Betrayal every word matters, and given its author so too nearly every single silence, i.e. the words not said.  Maybe never even considered for speaking.  

One result of this is a constant state of surprise.  Predicting what is about to happen simply doesn't work.  Oh, we know some of the results already.  The play began at the ending after all!  But the play isn't about the plot, but about the human relationships--the thousand thousand tiny moments, the words said or stammered or whispered or spat.  Every question asked, and answered (or not) assumes enormous weight--the weight of lives and hopes and disappointments.  Even the tiny, meaningless lies.  Or the tiny, seemingly meaningless details.  Whose kitchen was it when Jerry did that thing?  Where did Robert go in Venice, and how?  When did Emma tell her husband that secret?  

Trivial and momentous at the same time and for the same reason.

Betrayal plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 4pm until March 17, 2024 at Bergamot T1 Space, 2525 Michigan Ave, Santa Monica, CA 90404.