Bonjour,
“The Homecoming” is entering its fourth week and critics and audiences are loving it! If you haven’t yet made you reservations do it today! We’ll be doing an informal Q&A with the cast this Sunday, June 1st after the 400pm show. Join us and give us your questions and comments.
TOP TEN! RECOMMENDED!
“It’s been six decades since Harold Pinter’s enigmatic, controversial two-act drama about family conflict and dysfunction had its debut in London, yet it continues to lend itself to interpretative wrangling and ambiguous coloration. Still, the misogyny and male angst that are chiseled into it are oddly apropos to the times we now live in where critical attention has recently been focused on the subject of “toxic masculinity” and its destructive effects…. Director Frederique Michel has done an excellent job of regulating the aggressive tensions that continually arise in this play, as well as skillfully accentuating its sexual elements without overdoing them. The performances are excellent, especially Beyer whose turn as Ruth is flawless.” — Lovell Estes III
“WOW!”
“Directed to laceratingly sharp effect by Frédérique Michel and performed by a cast of seasoned City Garage vets and a couple of talented newbies, The Homecoming adds up to a whole lot of fun-and-games of the vicious, venomous sort. Rarely has there been a nastier family patriarch than Dunn’s Max, and it’s great fun to see how he keeps the always dependable Frank’s Sam under his thumb. Equally terrific are Marr’s cowed and cuckolded Teddy, Langsam’s brutal, conniving Lenny, and Cannata’s coarse, not terribly clever Joey. Still, this is City Garage stealth weapon Beyer’s show all the way, whether tantalizing the boys with tales of her adventures as a “model for bodies,” or tempting them with crossed and uncrossed legs that could give Basic Instinct’s Catherine Tramell lessons in seduction, or breaking her marriage vows in full view of them all….A blast!”
— Steven Stanley, Stage SceneLA
“This cast, under the direction of Frederique Michel, makes every glance or smile or silence work….The experience proves eerie, fascinating, a little bit disgusting, often quite funny, and it crawls under one’s skin. Bravo!
— The World Through Night Colored Glasses
“Directed by Frederique Michel, The Homecoming is a play that only gets better over time….[It] still packs a punch.”
— Accessibly Live Off-line
The Homecoming by Harold Pinter
May 9 – June 15, 2025
Fridays, Saturdays 8:00pm; Sundays 4:00pm
One of Nobel-prize winning playwright Harold Pinter’s greatest plays, this darkly comic, hauntingly ambiguous, play follows a family of men in a seedy house in North London: Max, the aging, crude patriarch, his ineffectual brother Sam, and two of Max’s three sons, both unmarried, Lenny, a small-time pimp and Joey, who dreams of success as a boxer. Returning to this oppressive household, one simmering with bottled-up anger and barely concealed hatreds, is the oldest son Teddy, now a successful professor of philosophy in America. After six years abroad, he brings his wife Ruth, to meet the family for the first time but the visit quickly turns into an ominous game of cat and mouse. In this unsettling drama of insidious manipulation, subtle power struggles, and sexual game-playing, nothing is quite what it seems.
A New Pledge of $20,000!
As we told you last week, a very special patron (who wishes to remain anonymous) has made an incredibly generous pledge of $20,000 to support the work at City Garage! Can you help us match this amount by the end of the summer so that we can fully benefit from our angel’s wonderful pledge? Thanks to these kind people below, we’ve already raised $9,164! We’re almost halfway there!
Roger Director
Joanne Leslie
Ricky Lee Grove
Ann Bronston
Tom Laskey
Anonymous
Steve Diskin
Martha Duncan
Bo Roberts
Anonymous
Lindsey Carlsen
Holly Dunnigan
Mr. & Mrs. Jerome Greenberg
Michele and Curt Wittig
Tom Patchett
Please join them and help us get the rest of the way. Any amount, small or large is welcome!
Merci, and see you soon at City Garage!
Archie, Frederique & Charles