Harold Pinter’s two-act family drama has variously been seen as an Oedipal struggle between fathers and sons, a misogynistic tract that fatally sexualises its female character and, diametrically, likened to Henrik Ibsen for a wife’s rejection of respectable married life in lieu of a flagrantly independent existence. What to make of it in our post-#MeToo age?
Matthew Dunster’s production, intentionally or otherwise, appears more like a snapshot of misogyny at its most unapologetic, as university professor Teddy (Robert Emms) returns to his febrile, all-male, working-class family home after years of estrangement with his wife, Ruth (Lisa Diveney), in tow.
It has all the period detail intact, from its splenetic 1960s cockney vernacular to references to serving in the the “Italian campaign” of the second world war. But there is a timelessness to the aggressive misogyny among the men in this family. Max (Jared Harris) is its absolute patriarch, who weaponises fatherhood against his sons (even his memory of once tucking them in to bed holds menace), and brands Ruth a “tart” on first meeting. As the play’s fulcrum, Harris’s Max is not always a brute enough presence for the necessary menace to pervade the first act, though there is plenty of dark comedy. He has outbursts but is wistful and soft-edged too. The threat in Pinter’s irrepressible script slowly surfaces – but never quite enough of it.
This is not helped by Moi Tran’s set, which is big and airy without any of the tight, hot, claustrophobic intimacy needed to send the family to boiling point. The sofa on which the most intimate scenes occur is distantly upstage. Set in east (rather than north) London, the sitting room looks upwardly mobile, with its elegant dresser and tasteful bowl of granny smiths, while the powder pink and mint coloured interior decor is too dainty for such a muscular household.
However, Dunster adds a surprising surrealism to the drama, with Sally Ferguson’s spot-lighting in some scenes bringing an otherworldly contrast to the kitchen-sink naturalism of the set. Characters are pulled back to an early memory or an extreme mind state. This brings freshness to certain lines, such as when Lenny pleads with Max “Don’t clout me with that stick, dad,” as if it were a flashback to scared boyhood rather than a sarcastic squaring up to an ageing father.
There are effectively frenzied interludes of jazz, and violence is accompanied by the sudden clash of cymbals. Still, the production remains just a little too timid. Lenny’s first threatening overture to Ruth, in which he wants to touch her, is undercharged. And the power play between the men is not savage enough, although brothers Lenny (Joe Cole) and Joey (David Angland) supply ample comedy.
That changes in the second act when Ruth becomes more overtly sexualised by the brothers and – willingly, in Pinter’s hands – sexually intimate with them.
Max’s chauffeur brother Sam, the only character to manifest benign masculinity, is sublimely played by Nicolas Tennant. Every line he speaks sounds truly felt. Diveney is good as Ruth, hard as flint and uncowed by the men as she sashays and snaps out her orders to them. The final scene shows them surrounding her on their knees in supplication, and this tableau captures how fear, awe and neediness lie at the heart of misogyny.
• At the Young Vic, London, until 27 January
