Strong Cast at Ease in ‘The Homecoming’

A writer in love with the evanescence of truth, Harold Pinter can succeed or fail on stage for reasons no larger than a flea. And it’s not always complete success or utter failure. The difference between a solid Pinter production and a production with something extra, with a blackjack behind its back, cannot be detected by the naked eye. You only realize the difference if, on the way back to your car, in an exhilaratingly strange way, your head hurts.

The South Coast Repertory revival of “The Homecoming” (1965) is a solid, careful achievement, nicely cast. Yet my head felt fine after seeing it. Pinter’s power plays and sexual menace, here very cleanly put in the service of a little family story, stop short of dark entrancement.

It has its moments, certainly. As Teddy, Nicholas Hormann manages a tight smile suggesting the sort of cruelty only an academic could muster. Colette Kilroy, who plays his wife, Ruth, an exceedingly calculating flesh peddler, hovers above the men like a hawk on the lookout for a nice meal.

Here’s the scene Ruth surveys. A university philosophy lecturer (Hormann) returns unannounced to the Hackney East End London tomblike home of his father, Max (W. Morgan Sheppard, with a voice like a ground-glass gargle). Teddy’s two brothers live with dad: Lenny the pimp (Don Harvey), and Joey the demolition man (Sean Howse). Max’s fussy chauffeur brother, Sam (Richard Doyle), lives there as well. Teddy has brought along his mysterious wife (Kilroy). Their three little boys have been left behind in America, where Teddy teaches.

In an all-male cage, Ruth is the steak tossed in by the zookeeper. She is also one of Pinter’s typical mother/whore conceits, the “life force” envisioned by George Bernard Shaw, but made carnal, teasing. By the end, a sexual transaction has been made, shades of Joe Orton’s “Entertaining Mr. Sloane,” Teddy’s homecoming leads to a farewell, and the family ties remain as binding as ever.

Everyone from Pinter’s official biographer, the fine London critic Michael Billington, to various directors of his work have declared the play Pinter’s masterpiece. Certainly its action is trackable and definable, even when the motives of its venal participants slither like eels. But clarity of meaning doesn’t really become Pinter. The reversals of fortune in “The Homecoming” feel mechanical. There’s more juice and life and true disorientation in some of his earlier, messier works (“The Birthday Party,” “The Hothouse”). And, later, the spare beauty and searching quality of “Betrayal” or “Old Times” revealed another side of a first-rank dramatist.

At SCR, scenic designer James Youmans creates a dusky purple sinkhole of a home for “The Homecoming,” with a truly scary floral wallpaper design and an untrustworthy staircase leading upstairs, where at one point Ruth entertains her brother-in-law.

The setting’s given all the right shadows by Paulie Jenkins’ lighting; Maggie Morgan’s costume plot uses bright color--Ruth’s very 1965 blue dress pops out like a cartoon--with unerring selectivity.

As the patriarch Max, a kind of low-rent Lear, Sheppard has the bullying backslapping moves down pat. When he reflects upon the “marvelous open-air life” he is not, at the moment, leading, there’s a bitterly funny delusional edge to his relish. Sheppard’s good, one piece of director Martin Benson’s smoothly interlocking ensemble. And yet ....

When Pinter’s memorable, it’s because the menace is all around you before you have a chance to put on your gas mask. Ideally you don’t see the short, sharp shocks coming. This production could use a few.

At a time when American audiences are bringing plenty of their own free-floating anxiety to the experience of watching Pinter, Pinter’s interpreters must return the anxiety in spades.

*

“The Homecoming,” South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2:30 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Ends Nov. 18. $27-$52. (714) 708-5555. Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes.

W. Morgan Sheppard: Max

Don Harvey: Lenny

Richard Doyle: Sam

Sean Howse: Joey

Nicholas Hormann: Teddy

Colette Kilroy: Ruth

Written by Harold Pinter. Directed by Martin Benson. Scenic design by James Youmans. Costumes by Maggie Morgan. Lighting by Paulie Jenkins. Production manager Tom Aberger. Stage manager Randall K. Lum.