By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ***1/2

WHEN?: Monday 18 December, runs through 27 January 2024

This Pinter play celebrates its 60th birthday this year and it invites us into a 1964 working class London living room which is the very definition of what we would now call ‘toxic masculinity’.

• Read on for reasons including how this is an uncomfortable watch but that’s probably the point

Meet patriarch Max, unafraid to thump a sofa with his walking stick to make a point and drawn vividly by Jared Harris here, and his chauffeur brother Sam who worshipped Max’s late wife Jessie, is single and teased for being gay.

Max has 2 sons who live with him and they are Lenny, played by Joe Cole who may be most familiar from TV’s Peaky Blinders and manages to give an extremely menacing performance as the pimp who also skips about the stage when enthused, and dim boxer brother Joey who is brought to oafish life by David Angland.

The lack of a female presence has sparked a misogyny which is walked into by eldest brother Teddy and wife Ruth who he has married and had 3 children with in secret while working as a professor of philosophy in America.

Director Matthew Dunster gave us a no-nonsense Shirley Valentine earlier this year but his Homecoming is much more stylish with a fug of smoke in the auditorium between acts perhaps acknowledging the great deal of smoking going onstage and the use of spotlighting, percussion and jazz to highlight moments of great importance.

The last Homecoming we saw was Jamie Lloyd’s and despite being a masterclass in writing which we can appreciate much more now than 8 years ago it does, thankfully, have the feel of a very evocative period piece despite some of its themes being hugely of interest now.

At 1 point Harris’ character talks of his ‘instincive understanding of animals’ and, although he’s talking about racehorses, it’s a comment that could equally be applied to the company he’s keeping as he starts to be usurped as the ‘man of the house’ by others around him.

Lisa Diveney plays Ruth with a swagger in her stride but the way she acts, responding to the misogyny of the house by trying to tame it with her own sexuality, seems improbable although she does have the agency to be giving it a go despite all the brickbats she faces.

Pinter is not often thought of as funny but there are some laughs to be had here although it is a hugely uncomfotable watch as was probably the point even back as far as 60 years ago.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy Young Vic
• Have you seen a Joe Cole show before or visited the Young Vic? Tickets
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