Yeats’s words ‘the uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor’ sum up for me Pinter’s The Homecoming. Max and two of his sons (Lenny and Joey) are all bestial, but it is perhaps Max who is the most bestial. I think of him as a Cyclops, as a shambling bear, as limping, cuckolded Hephaestos busy at his forge. In Max’s case, his forge used to be the butcher’s shop, where he used ‘the chopper and the slab’, but now it is the kitchen, where he cooks and which he finds ‘nice’ and ‘cosy’. Traditionally, the kitchen is the woman’s room, but Max seems fairly willing to take on the role of mother, even to the extent of declaring that he has given birth to three grown men, ‘All on my own bat!’, and that he has suffered the pains of giving birth and still feels the pangs.
He is a character who takes the actor out of his comfort zone – or at least he takes me out of mine. At his heart (as at the heart of forge and kitchen) there is an incandescence which continually erupts; he is consumed with rage, he is cunning, self-pitying, dishonest, insolent, fearful, lecherous (though I suspect he is sexually impotent, and always has been) and a cruel bully. But he loves his youngest son, Joey. The problem for the actor (or at least my problem) is to get away from one’s intellect and its civilised defences, so that this beast, with its rage, can emerge through one’s body and one’s voice. Which brings on another problem: merely ranting is no good; one has, paradoxically, to have more control rather than less for a part like this – which means, among other things doing singer’s exercises for an hour a day (if I have the time) and exploring the physical qualities of the words Pinter gives Max. It also means days of depression when nothing seems to go right, and sometimes whole days and nights of panic… Why the devil did I listen to the blandishments of Walter Roberts, why did I agree to do this, why…?
But as well as being a deeply shocking play (one woman acquaintance of mine had nightmares for two consecutive nights after reading it and woke up screaming), it is a wonderful play, with a wicked humour, an acute sensitivity to patterns of speech and a biting analysis of male misogyny. In the end it is the woman who wins: Joey gets his mother, and Max is left with ashes.
June 23, 2008 at 4:13 am
Lasciviousness in bloom. I am so glad that you heeded by blandishments Tim.Max is blossoming into a delightfuly evil dirty cruel self seeking bully. I am sure you will inspire more nightmares in the performance.
June 24, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Playing Teddy.
Lots of thoughts come and go playing this weird character(like how to spell ‘weird’, for example!). Today’s thought is that ‘The Homecoming’ could so easily be subtitled ‘Meet the Vampires’. That led me on to the idea that if someone was pitching ‘The Homecoming’ to Hollywood they could describe it as a dystopian version of ‘Meet the Fockers’. Here the nice guy takes his nice wife home to meet his family. ‘They are very warm people.’ he tells her and half-tells himself. Then it all goes very wrong.
I find it such a challenge, an exciting one, to work out why Teddy does what he does. In the normal course of events, using the word ‘normal’ in a very broad sense, he behaves in such apparently abnormal ways. He makes two bizarre choices. The first is to go home with his wife. The second, which is even more bizarre,…well you’ll have to come and see the play!
Wrestling with the possible answers to these questions is a process that is intellectually demanding and spiritually draining. Before working on this play I would have just considered the previous sentence hyperbole. It is definitely not!
Teddy’s life seems intimately linked to Ruth’s and that of the group of vicious neanderthals he has the misfortune to call his family. It is a painful situation to explore but such a fascinating part to play.