I couldn’t wait to see Luc Bondy’s staging
of Harold Pinter’s 1965 Homecoming/Le
Retour, even though it was in French. The reviews in both the French and
British press have applauded the apparently “fresh” rendition. Though I am
always reluctant to see translations of English language plays, the all star
cast of Bruno Ganz, Louis Garrel, Emmanuelle Seigner and Micha Lescot, together
with the rave reviews convinced me Le
Retour was not to be missed.
Perhaps my expectations were too high, but
I was very underwhelmed by this staging of Pinter’s otherwise tense and caustic,
family working-class British drama. From where I was sitting, the play didn’t
translate well into French, literally. The French language, beautiful as it is,
mirrors the abstraction of philosophical discourse. And so, the concrete
realism of Pinter’s language, of working class British language and life was
nowhere to be found in this version of Le
Retour. As I understand it, for Pinter, it is not only the language itself that
communicates, but the nuances, the double meanings, what lies behind the words
but is nevertheless left unsaid. He relies on these layers of language for the creation of meaning.
Again, this level of communication was lost to the French.
I was also disappointed by the casting, if
not by the acting. All but Micha Lescot seemed like odd choices. Bruno Ganz, who I can’t help seeing, always, through the
lens of his most informative performance as Kaspar Hauser in Herzog’s film, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974), was
wonderful, but nevertheless, an odd choice to play Max. Ganz virtually redefined the characteristics of gentleness, naivety
and vulnerability as the young man who appeared to the world having been kept
in a dungeon for all of his life, in Herzog's film. Of course, he is more recently
known for his performance of Hitler in Der
Untergang (2004) in which he
masterfully plays the ailing dictator. However, on stage in Le Retour, it seemed that Ganz
did not have the presence or the command demanded by the character of Max,
the violent, angry patriarch. Such a figure, I imagine, would create a sense of
fear and anxiety in the air that surrounds him. But Bruno Ganz is mild, and
still somewhat gentle as an actor: he did not convince me that his physical
presence was in any way threatening. Indeed, none of his sons reflected a sense
of their fear of him.
Similarly Emmanuelle Seigner was “too
French” in her performance of the provocative, restless and seductive Ruth.
Seigner was anything but the working class Brit with her coy, playful sexual
teasing. As the character who apparently provides the glue that holds the play
together, who comes to symbolize the tensions, fears, frustrations and secret
desires of the family of men, Seigner was less than convincing. Like the other
relationships in this version of the play, her seduction of the men, her games
and desires, were somehow not credible, coming out of nowhere, conveyed with a
one-dimensionality. Like the relationship between Max and his sons, there was no
tension between Seigner and the other characters.
Again, I wonder if this was not helped
because the drama of Pinter’s language could not be left unsaid,
unfelt, unheard, in French. To give just one example, although we know why
Teddy left home in the first place, all of the repressed trauma, the enigma,
the implications of violence, are never felt in the way that the characters
relate to each other now. John Lahr writes in The New Yorker:
"'The Homecoming' changed my life.
Before the play, I thought words were just vessels of meaning; after it, I saw
them as weapons of defense. Before, I thought theatre was about the spoken;
after, I understood the eloquence of the unspoken. The position of a chair, the
length of a pause, the choice of a gesture, I realized, could convey
volumes."
What changed Lahr’s life is, of course,
what was missing from Luc Bondy’s production.
The one thing I really loved about Bondy’s
version of Le Retour was the set,
with its signature missing wall. The use of the window in the middle of the set,
at the back of the stage, was superb. The characters appear and disappear like
ghosts behind the dirty window that is meant to connect the interior of the
home to the world outside. But it never does. The characters are always like
apparitions as they stand looking inside. And then when on the inside, their
images become reflected in the window, making them no more than images who have
no power to assert their identity.
Ultimately, though, this is a play of
excruciatingly painful realizations and unrealized desires. Neither the staging
of Le Retour, the casting, nor the
language of translation can communicate the nuances of the social world in
which such dramas take place. And so when the French audience laughed at the
most poignant and violent moments, I was convinced that it’s still best to see
English theatre in its own language.
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