Stage: The Homecoming

Brighton is blessed with a wide range of theatre venues, from the large scale commercial enterprises that offer us a programme of national and international theatre and entertainment, through the smaller ‘fringe’ venues who stage local and visiting productions, to the smaller but equally vital amateur venues who in our experience stage productions that can easily be judged against the professional companies that visit.

So where does the New Venture Theatre sit amongst all this? It is one of the most adventurous producing houses in town, never fearful of tackling some of the most difficult works of drama from the last century and invariably pulling those productions off to great acclaim. The balance of people involved ranges from aspiring actors to working professionals and this gives them real energy and edge, and the venue has a superb atmosphere that draws audiences back again and again.

Challenging, disturbing, tantalisingly enigmatic and savagely funny

And true to form they are once again going in deep with Harold Pinter’s Homecoming. Challenging, disturbing, tantalisingly enigmatic and savagely funny, Homecoming represents Harold Pinter at the height of his considerable powers.

“There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false.” – Harold Pinter

Teddy, a professor of philosophy in the USA, brings his wife Ruth back to meet his family at their home in North London. Manipulation, emotional blackmail, seduction and jealousy follow as the characters engage in their chosen form of psychological warfare, with Ruth as the focus of the family’s struggle for supremacy.

Pinter examines the family relationships with a ruthless objectivity, devoid of any moral agenda. Within this crackling hotbed of visceral tension, exchanges seemingly polite and genuine are in fact malicious and destructive in nature. Language is utilised and deployed as a weapon to control, dominate and humiliate. The play remains a modern classic and a landmark in twentieth century British drama.

This will be Steven O’Shea’s sixth production as director for the New Venture Theatre following Speed the Plow by David Mamet (2011), Kvetch by Steven Berkoff (2012), Old Times by Harold Pinter (2014), Hamlet by Shakespeare (2015), and Loot by Joe Orton (2016).

The Homecoming
New Venture Theatre Upstairs
20 – 28 January 2017
7.45pm Matinee Sun 22nd 2.30pm
ticketsource.co.uk/newventuretheatre
Box Office 01273 746118