May 30th, 2009
We went along to the opening night of Harold Pinters play, The Homecoming at York Theatre Royal. (It is running from the 30th May 09 to the 20 June 09) Written by Harold Pinter, Directed by Damian Cruden, Designed by Dawn Allsopp and Lighting design by Richard G Jones we were interested to see how this production would pan out. Paul Shelley played Max, Robert Pickavance played Sam(superbly camp), Suzy Cooper played Ruth, Sam Hazeldine (he who looks a little like Sean Penn) played Lenny, Ian Harris played Teddy and finally Jack Ashton (nice pecs) played Joey.
Extract from the theatres website
“One of the masterpieces of the Twentieth Century, The Homecoming is Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter at his most dark and brilliant. North London. 1960s. An old and sinister house. Teddy and his new wife, Ruth, return to the family home after six years absence teaching in America. A family home of men. Aggressive Max, ineffective Sam, bitter Lenny and dreamer Joey. Long hidden rivalries, fear, triumph and pain create a scintillating piece of work that is both hilariously funny and deeply dark”
The curtain rose at 7.30pm and we were greeted by an impressive set that reminded me of a number of my elderly relatives homes. First up was Max and Lenny and over the next twenty minutes the remaining members of the cast made their appearances. We are not entirely sure why though, but we both struggled to find interest in the characters on stage. While Harold Pinter (1930 – 2008) has undoubtedly written many a fine play, this particular one winning the 1967 Tony Award for Best Play, we simply couldn’t get into it. A worrying sign in any theatre is when I find myself looking at my watch and unfortunately I glanced a couple of times wishing the interval to come round this evening. When it did, we took a breath of fresh air in the courtyard and bumped into one of Paul’s colleagues from York University. It seemed that we were not the only ones struggling to get into this play and we swapped views and feelings.
Ten minutes later, I heard the call for people to take their seats for the second half and the four of us briefly wondered whether to leg it or go back in. We went back in, but unfortunately the experience didn’t really improve for us.
The underlying story was clever, it included humorous moments and dark moments and the end was quite dark and weird. However as already mentioned, we could not really get into the characters and I didn’t really care one way or the other about any of them. There just wasn’t anything to connect us with what was happening on stage.
In summary, this is now our second disappointment in as many months when it comes to serious plays at York Theatre Royal and while we might have wondered whether it was just us, it was reassuring to hear the reaction of other people as they left at the end of play. They were similar to ours.
Pryordurking rating 2 stars.
Posted in Arts and Entertainment
……edited….. the play was gripping and had questions whirling around my head for days. it is not – i agree – an easy watch but it is certainly compelling and a must see show.
I found that the cast did a good job in portraying the characters given to them by the writer and to some extent the director. You must understand that it was a different world that Pinter grew up and wrote in, it was much easier to shock an audience than it is now! This is a very different play to what we see in the mainstream now and thus must be treated that way.I would myself prefer a more linear storyline with greater pace, however this play has got us talking and has got us thinking so Job done i would say! well done to all those involved!!!!