|
Revivals of once-controversial plays are always tricky. Sometimes, as time passes, they grow toothless, and we congratulate ourselves on our sophistication, wondering what in the world ever seemed so shocking.
So credit director Tim Saukiavicus with a triumph: his Ensemble Theatre production of Harold Pinter's "The Homecoming" manages to be as disturbing, dark, enigmatic, and appallingly funny as its 1965 premiere must have been. From my perch in the back row, I could watch the opening night audience twitch, poleaxed by Pinter's outrageous characters and twists of plot.
That turned out to be a marvelous vantage point, since director-designer Saukiavicus has opened up the Ensemble Theatre stage into a cavernous space -- a deconstructed house interior. The show is full of bold, effective directorial choices. From the opening scene we know this is a very weird house indeed. Confrontations that someone else might stage nose-to-nose are spread out to the very edges of the stage; in mid-scene, combatants in green gloves break into swaying dances to unearthly jazz tunes. (Corby Grubb's sound design and Harriet Cone's costumes are also superb.) All the non-realistic touches -- including the constant flicking on and off of Laura McLaughlin's lights -- help maintain the play's bizarre edginess.
"The Homecoming" chronicles the hilariously uncomfortable visit of a professor of philosophy (the excellent Allan Byrne) and his wife (Betsy Zajko) to his London family home, where they meet and match wits with one of the freakier masculine quartets in dramatic literature. Patriarch Max (Reuben Silver) is a gruff, horny butcher, whose cooking is inedible and whose paeans to his dead wife shift to foul-mouthed Cockney insults without a blink. David J. Samuels is a stunning younger brother Joey, an aspiring prizefighter; he looks like a feral dog, whether he's attacking a mattress with his fists or visibly drooling over his leggy sister-in-law. Tedd Burr is archly funny as his uncle Sam, a homosexual cab driver, floating through the kitchen in his yellow ascot, banging pots and feeling unappreciated. Gregory Del Torto is a revelation as brother Lenny -- dapper in his silk dressing gown, he is a quintessential Pinter actor, moving with ambiguous grace between humor and menace with the lift of an eyebrow. The scenes between him and Byrne are spectacularly good.
In the nearly impossible role of Ruth, Betsy Zajko is creditably enigmatic. She doesn't quite have the magnetism to carry off all the play's difficult shifts of character or reversals of status; however, her final transformation from black-wigged siren to quiet, blue-jeaned frump is wonderfully provocative.
Pinter's twisted ending has been variously interpreted by a generation of scholars and audiences. In its exploration of the Madonna/Whore stereotype, is it misogynist or secretly feminist? Who does this ritual "homecoming" actually elevate or debase: the woman, or this needy pack of womanless men?
Saukiavicus has juggled the ambiguities sufficiently to make the trip a slyly pleasurable one, no matter what your conclusions. It's an admirable homecoming for this Cleveland-born, Chicago-based director. May he come home much more often.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|