When Harold Pinter was preparing to play the patriarch and ex-butcher Max in a 2007 radio production of his 1965 masterpiece The Homecoming, he was asked how he would know if he’d nailed the part. “If you get it right, it’s a good pong,” he replied, “and if you don’t get it right, it’s a bad pong.” By that measure, Jamie Glover’s expert revival produces a most outstanding stink.
Keith Allen is Max, holding court from his armchair in the bleak north London house he shares with his younger sons – the shark-like pimp Lenny (Mathew Horne) and the dopey boxer Joey (Geoffrey Lumb) – and his ineffectual brother Sam (Ian Bartholomew). Into this corrosive existence strolls Max’s eldest child, the philosophy professor Teddy (Sam Alexander), back from the US to introduce his wife, Ruth (Shanaya Rafaat), to the family. “They’re not ogres,” he smiles.
