In Harold Pinter's 1965 play, philosophy lecturer Teddy returns from the US, where he is now resident, to his north London family home, accompanied by his wife Ruth.
The house is an all-male establishment ruled over by Teddy's father Max, who lives there with his weak brother Sam and his other two sons: Joey, a dim boxer, and sharky Lenny. This is the family that Teddy has described to his wife as "warm".
The men are certainly very taken with Ruth and have obviously been missing a woman's touch about the place. Before long they propose that she not only become a mother substitute but that they set her up as a prostitute, a proposition that Ruth accepts with alacrity even though this entails abandoning her own three sons. Her husband voices no objection and leaves for the US alone.
Put like this the play sounds preposterous and Robin Lefevre's production doesn't make it seem any more credible. In fact, Lefevre only succeeds in making a shocking play seem plodding and dull. But there are so many holes in the play that if it were a jumper you'd chuck it away.
Plenty have talked about The Homecoming as a major masterpiece, but it is an odious work that hinges on a male sexual fantasy of surrender and dominance games. It is a power play that pits father against sons, brother against brother and eventually men against women, whom men perceive only as whores or mothers.
Why doesn't Ruth just walk out the door instead of colluding willingly in her own enslavement? Probably because she is not a character, just an enigma with legs and a strange hairdo. In Lia Williams's coolly detached performance, Ruth may believe that through enslaving herself she can come out on top. Deluded, but there is enough of the curiously camp and coy in the performances of all five male leads to suggest that some kind of emasculation is going on.
It is hard to believe in this play. Lefevre's production does nothing to suggest it, but I kept wondering whether the entire thing is just a fantasy - that Teddy actually isn't a philosophy lecturer living in the US, Ruth isn't his wife, they don't have three sons. Perhaps all that we are witnessing is a game regularly played out by a family that prefers weird sexual make-believe to Monopoly.
• Until December 1. Box office: 020-7369 1731.
