Pinter’s power play

Ian McShane (left) and Gareth Saxe in Harold Pinter’s “The Homecoming,” remounted on Broadway 40 years after its 1967 American premiere.

By Scott Harrah

Harold Pinter’s classic “The Homecoming” is perhaps his most controversial work, and for good reason. The plot and the characters — a family of working-class North London men and their mysterious, sexually smoldering sister-in-law who’s visiting from America — can easily be seen as misogynist to the uninitiated, and certainly isn’t a play that would ever thrill bona-fide feminists. Its depiction of the solitary female character, Ruth (Eve Best, last seen in her Tony-nominated role this year as Josie in O’Neill’s “A Moon for the Misbegotten”), as a sex object and ultimately a “whore” can be difficult to stomach even for those who normally like avant-garde theater of the absurd, including this reviewer.

Theater critics and dramatic scholars have had mixed feelings about the play ever since it first debuted in London back in 1965 and was later brought to America, where it won the Tony for Best Play in 1967. The legendary New York Times drama critic Walter Kerr wrote that the story is basically about “a single situation that the author refuses to dramatize until he has dragged us all, aching, through a half-drugged dream.” Many audiences in the late 1960s were understandably shocked by the story — not only is it one of the few modern plays that portray women in such a negative light, it was originally produced at the apex of the sexual revolution and feminism.

From the beginning, Eve Best portrays Ruth as a base, iniquitous woman, not the least bit offended or rankled by her despicable brother-in-laws’ many suggestive comments. Without having seen the original production or the 1973 British film adaptation, it’s hard to know whether other actresses ever played Ruth as a woman of such questionable morals. But here at the Cort Theatre, Ruth is supposed to be a mother of three, visiting London with her college professor husband Teddy (James Frain), and it’s perplexing to comprehend why a respectable, middle-class woman in either the 1960s or the 21st century would so easily submit to the advances of her male in-laws without a bit of initial restraint.

Most of the story revolves around power and family dysfunction, all served up with massive doses of testosterone. In the first act, it is the cantankerous father Max (wonderfully played by Ian McShane) who dominates the family, and holds his sons in such supercilious contempt that he balks when they attempt to call him “Dad.” Max’s boys are equally cold to the old man. Raul Esparza, as handsome, well-dressed, acid-tongued Lenny, has never been better (he’s far more convincing here than he was as Bobby in last year’s revival of “Company”). Gareth Saxe, as the youngest brother Joey, an aspiring boxer, is perfect as a guy loaded with uncontrollable libido but lacking in brains. Michael McKean (of “Laverne & Shirley” fame), as Max’s limo-driver brother Sam, gives one of the best performances, adding some badly needed human decency to a family of emotional degenerates. Pinter’s narrative — a string of dark sexual innuendoes and dialogue that’s loaded with quirky non-sequiturs — is obtuse to put it mildly, and the cast members do a nice job of keeping the story from collapsing through its sometimes vague thematic foundation.

The power shifts in act two to Ruth as the men morph into uncontrollable sexual animals. Unfortunately, most of the first act is so predictable — Ruth seems “easy” from her very first scene — that we’re not surprised that she finally sexually dominates them in the second act. One wonders if this revival of “The Homecoming” might have been more plausible if director Daniel Sullivan had insisted that Ruth be a bit more reserved and demure in the beginning.