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Coward tribute

Lloyd Evans

Wednesday, 27th February 2008

Brief Encounter
The Cinema Haymarket

The Homecoming
Almeida

Under the Eagle
White Bear

At the Almeida, Michael Attenborough has produced a rock-solid version of one of Pinter’s weirdest pieces of inspiration, The Homecoming. Excellent performances. Kenneth Cranham raging impotently as Max the cuckolded dad is as ugly as he is enthralling. Nigel Lindsay’s kindly pudding of a face acquires the babyish cast of real villainy as Len the charismatic psycho. And there’s a titanic stillness about Jenny Jules’s Ruth. Her beauty has a monumental and unearthly quality which seems just right for this fairytale character who transforms herself in the space of a few hours from home-making mum to spread-eagled slut. Never having seen this play before I have to be blunt — it’s stark raving bonkers. There’s no reason for Teddy to hand over his wife to his ghastly coven of brothers. And Ruth herself has even less cause to abandon her children and a comfortable university life in order to whore herself out for a bunch of cockney thugs. Intellectuals will tell you the script is a searching analysis of the secret kinship between prostitution and marriage. Me, I take the same view as the author and look at it with a bemused shrug as if it were an avalanche or a car crash. It just happened. Explanations irrelevant.

Under the Eagle is set at Chequers during a summit between a silky smooth British prime minister and a prickly blonde US president. The plot could do with some ironing out. The Brits are refusing to release a UK citizen kidnapped by the Americans but temporarily held at a British airport. Negotiating his release, the PM asks the president to prevent right-wing American preachers from teaching creationism to British schoolkids. Don’t quite get that. And for some reason an angry standup has been kidnapped by MI5 and forced to attend the summit supper. Wouldn’t an invite have done? Plot aside, the script has lots of merriment. ‘How are the kids?’ the PM asks the President. ‘Shooting up,’ she says. ‘Sorry to hear that. Are they getting help?’ Director Conrad Blakemore coaxes fine performances from the ensemble, and Jonathan Rigby, as the PM’s wry, knowing deputy, is outstanding. Whenever he’s on stage a special electricity crackles through the theatre. This is an interesting, funny and slightly flawed political satire. But Rigby is faultless. The man’s a star.

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