You can’t choose your family: ‘The Homecoming’ at the Young Vic

Saturday 23rd December 2023, matinee

Once, when directing one of his own plays, Pinter is famously supposed to have answered an actor’s question with the response ‘It is unclear what the author intended here’.

As we come close to the 60th anniversary of his play ‘The Homecoming’, the importance of those words becomes ever clearer. We cannot look to the author for answers, we can only experience the drama and take from it whatever we can. When we think about it in those terms, what is left unsaid becomes as important as what is said. Pinter became known as a writer who evoked an atmosphere of menace in his plays, and the uncertainty of the audience plays a crucial part – after all imagination tends to be worse than reality.

It is almost impossible to summarise the plot, but essentially we enter the world of a family of sorts – the patriarch, his brother and his two sons paint a portrait of mundanity punctuated by moments of shocking violence. Into their lives returns a third son and his wife, with unexpected consequences which we won’t get into here. Let’s just say The Homecoming depicted is not quite what it appears to be.

Pinter excels at building tension from the smallest pieces of dialogue and action. Max, the patriarch of the family wanders in looking for a pair of scissors. Lenny, his son, is reading the paper and picking out a horse to bet on. Sam, Max’s brother explains in great detail why his services as a chauffeur are so much in demand. Joey is learning to box. The descriptions and then depictions of violence come later, but we already have all the elements of a crime family if we want to fill in the gaps. Or not.

They are joined by estranged son Teddy and his wife. Ostensibly upwardly mobile, having secured an academic position in the US, he is distinctly nervous about returning, promising his wife that they will just be a few days and then they can go home. During the play, however, the balance of power shifts, and he is the one eager to go home, with or without his wife.

Matthew Dunster’s direction in this new production at the Young Vic stays purposeful and focused.  A thrust stage is not our favourite configuration, but he makes the most of it with a minimal but naturalistic set and an immersive experience which had the actors very close to the audience at times. As the tension and power struggles slowly build up, the real shock of the denouement is the feeling of inevitability that goes with it.

Jared Harris and Joe Cole shine out amongst and excellent cast, as the mysterious patriarch Max, past his prime but still capable of exerting power and control, and Lenny, the younger man, whose energy and potential seem barely contained at all.

As for the ending, it still has the power to shock after sixty years.