Theatre review: The Homecoming

Matthew Dunster's production of The Homecoming at the Young Vic sets Pinter's play firmly in the 1960s when it was written: The all-male family of East End gangsters at its heart are an insular group, buried away listening to jazz; the female interloper is a vision of the swinging sixties, up on all the latest fashions and wanting the best of them. What the power balance is by the end of the play is always enigmatic, but Dunster's apparently clear telling of the story may leave it murkier than ever. Max (Jared Harris) is the widowed patriarch who raised his three sons on his own - it's unlikely he'd ever acknowledge that his probably-gay brother Sam (Nicolas Tennant,) who's lived with them for decades, might have helped at all.

Theatre review: Donkey Heart

The Old Red Lion has supplied the West End with a surprising amount of content in recent years, and their latest premiere sees the West End give back with a few big-name creatives going to the room above an Islington pub. The lighting is by recent Olivier nominee Peter Mumford, some of the cast have recently been in hit commercial shows, and the director is Nina Raine. The latter's involvement isn't that surprising though, as the playwright is her younger brother Moses Raine, and Donkey Heart touches on their family's Russian ancestry. The setting is a flat in modern-day Moscow where Ivan (Paul Wyett) and Zhenya (Wendy Nottingham) live with Ivan's father Alexander (Patrick Godfrey) and their children Sasha (Lisa Diveney,) Petya (James Musgrave) and Kolya (Albie Marber tonight, alternating with Pierre Atri.) Communism may be gone but the family live in what they describe as a collective hangover from it: They aren't (to the best of their knowledge) under constant surveillance, but the habit of keeping their thoughts and emotions to themselves is a hard one to break.