Director Daniel Sullivan does Harold Pinter proud in the current production of The Homecoming. His meticulous direction of this profound but delicate play is impeccable, and his marvelous cast beautifully acts the complex twists of our most obscure yet revealing playwright. The negativity, the viciousness of the father (Ian McShane) holds the play together as his loser brother (Michael McKean) and three sons (Raul Esparza, Gareth Saxe, James Frain) interact in the family manse with a visiting wife (Eve Best, who can be more sexy doing nothing than any wriggler on Broadway). Esparza is vivid, Saxe is a heartbreaker as a slow thinker, and the calm of Frain is eerily impossible.
Much of the play is about nothing, and it is all totally gripping, with dramatic tension from start to finish. All is strange in this skewed family, and Act Two shifts into full absurdity but sustains a sense of actuality. It's a bizarre, different, fascinating universe where values are topsy-turvy, relationships bend, and wheels turn within wheels as our understanding may become wavy, but it's all very theatrical and comprehensible as such.
Eugene Lee's imaginative, open but closed-in set, defining costumes by Jess Goldstein and lighting by Kenneth Posner complete the picture in this rare, fascinating play which sticks in my consciousness - replaying scenes and moments of the masterful cast fulfilling Pinter's unique vision.
