Family of Thugs Meet Their Match ; Theatre the Homecoming Almeida, N1

Summary

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AN intriguing air of mystery, never quite dispelled, permeates this key Harold Pinter play from the 1960s.

Michael Attenborough's production imparts fresh narrative tension to The Homecoming by casting that handsome, black actress Jenny Jules in the role of the enigmatic Ruth. As the wife of Teddy, an expatriate academic who returns unannounced to visit his shady workingclass family in London, Miss Jules is laden with sex-appeal and radiates a poised inscrutability. But she does not help cast fresh light on the play's elusive meaning. What explains Ruth's decision to desert her husband, children and comfortable life in America, to be set up as a high-class Soho whore by Teddy's brother, the violent, gangsterish Lenny? Critics and commentators have gone to dramatic extremes when trying to make definitive sense of The Homecoming.

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Extract

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Family of Thugs Meet Their Match ; Theatre the Homecoming Almeida, N1

They have interpreted it as a feminist tract in which Ruth, who may once have bee...

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