The Homecoming at FUSION Theatre

How can the unknown
merit reverence?

FUSION Theatre Company opens its 2008-2009 season with our exciting presentation of Harold Pinter's award-winning play The Homecoming on Thursday, Septermber 11 at 8:00 p.m at The Cell Theatre. Opening night features a catered reception at 7:00 p.m. Reservations are highly recommended.

Hot on the heels of the lauded Broadway revival, FUSION presents Albuquerque audiences with Pinter’s masterfully written play centering on family, power, and revelation. After years in the States, Teddy, accompanied by his wife Ruth, returns to the bosom of his north London family complete with its patriarch Max, Uncle Sam, boxing brother Joey, and the enigmatic Lenny. Family connections and the emotional convolutions of linked experience bring each character into confrontation with their deepest selves.

The Homecoming arrives in Albuquerque directly from an extremely successful revival on Broadway. In the central role of Max, the father, John Wylie returns to the FUSION stage after a terrific run in Mad Hattr in the Spring of 2007. The cast also features New Mexico professionals Bruce Holmes, Nick Lopez, Jacqueline Reid, Demetrio Vialpando, and Rick Wiles. FUSION founder Laurie Thomas directs.

Its 1967 Broadway opening won The Homecoming the Tony Award for Best Play; it was nominated earlier this year for another Tony Award for "Best Revival of a Play." In awarding him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005, the Swedish Academy cited author Harold Pinter for being "generally regarded as the foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the 20th century."

The Homecoming continues through September 28th with Thursday through Saturday performances at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday matinees at 2:00 p.m. For tickets and information call 766-9412 or click here: www.fusionabq.org/tix.htm.

Single tickets are $25 for general admission, $20 for students and seniors. Thursday performances (excluding opening night) feature a $10.00 student rush (with valid I.D.) and $18 actor rush (with professional resume.) The first Sunday 9/14 is a pay-what-you-wish performance. Group discounts are also available. However, substantial discounts are available when you purchase a season package!

Free parking is plentiful. The Cell is located at 700 1st St. N.W., just west of Broadway and south of Lomas.

Barry Gaines, Albuquerque Journal:
"Going home again a compelling journey

The FUSION Theatre Company begins its seventh season at The Cell with an intriguing production of Harold Pinter's modern classic, The Homecoming, a challenging and, at times, bewildering work. Although it was written more than 40 years ago, it maintains the power to trouble and to enlighten. Pinter was awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature for a corpus of plays that changed the sound and look of modern theater.

I find The Homecoming a comedy, one of the darkest. The characters seem recognizable, but they say and do strange and strangely compelling things.

Set in North London, The Homecoming looks at four members of an extended, dysfunctional family: paterfamilias Max, his rather sweet brother Sam, and Max's sons Lenny, an entrepreneurial pimp, and Joey, an aspiring boxer who has taken too many punches to the head. Since Max's wife Jessie died, the four men live together and claw away at each other.

After six years in America, eldest son Teddy brings his wife Ruth into this den of propinquity. Teddy has his Ph.D. and teaches philosophy; he prides himself on his "intellectual equilibrium": "I'm the one who can see." But his homecoming is overshadowed by Ruth's arrival at the family home and the impact she has on the men. She provides the female mystique the family has been lacking. That is all the plot I will reveal.

Laurie Thomas's direction also is interesting. I like the photograph of the absent mother (cropped so that she seems to recede from the frame) Thomas adds to the set. Language is central to this play: Watch the subtle ways that characters score points off of each other. Thomas retains some unfamiliar British terms while Americanizing others. The British accents of her cast are uneven but not really important. Pinter's pauses speak volumes, and Thomas often has her characters remain still despite the chaos around them. There are inconsistencies in the characters, but Pinter requires a retreat from the rational.

I had trouble accepting John Wiley as 70-year-old Max; his movements seemed studied. He did well, however, with Max's violence.

In the smaller role of Sam, Rick Wiles is strong. Demet Vialpando is a frightening Lenny, reptilian in the intensity of his stare. Nick Lopez does fine as the dim Joey, although he lacks an aura of incipient violence. Bruce Holmes and Jacqueline Reid play an enigmatic Teddy and Ruth. Holmes has a strong voice and keeps his character's emotions controlled when needed.

Reid projects sexuality and sanctuary as the play's only female.

Succumb to the mystical and mythical appeal of Pinter's masterpiece and see "family values" in a new light."

Amy Dalness, Weekly Alibi:
"Beautiful Disaster"

Harold Pinter's Tony Award-winning play The Homecoming is like an episode of “Jerry Springer.” It focuses on a family. A family with issues. A family ready to come undone as a result of those issues. A family that comes undone in the most unpredictable way.

But unlike “Springer,” there's very little yelling. In fact, Pinter is known for conveying drama with silence and subtlety, where a word can hit as hard as a punch. Maybe harder.

FUSION Theatre Company chose the challenging and rewarding piece to lead off its new season, which opened on Sept. 11. Pinter's play ended its revival run on Broadway in April, and FUSION did well to gain the production rights to perform it here in Albuquerque.

The backdrop for The Homecoming is a large home in North London. Max (John Wylie) is the head of a household of men, his wife having passed away some years earlier. Living with the elderly, retired butcher are his brother Sam (Rick Wiles), a successful chauffeur, and his two sons: Lenny (Demet Vialpando), the insomniac shadow dweller, and Joey (Nick Lopez), the dim-witted wannabe boxer. Into this testosterone-filled abode comes Max's third son, Teddy (Bruce Holmes), an expatriate professor of philosophy who now lives in America, and his British wife of six years, Ruth (Jacqueline Reid).

Teddy's visit is unexpected, but not entirely unwelcome. Feelings of resent and abandonment weigh on Teddy's encounters with his brothers and father, and Ruth's feminine wiles fill another void—exposing a few troubled spots within the couple's marriage. Their visit shakes the household's foundation and steers the seemingly immobile family in a direction that nearly kills the kindhearted Sam and leaves the audience with only a faint idea of what's to become of the characters.

Jerry Springer should really consider commissioning Pinter to write a few story lines for his family-shattering talk show.

What makes The Homecoming significant as FUSION’s lead in for this season significant is its ability to challenge not only the performers but the audience. Pinter is a master of drama and also bitingly witty. But if the actors don't understand the humor and the audience isn't engaged in the characters, the comedy is lost—it's that subtle. FUSION's cast and crew get it, making this production successful in dark humor.

Director Laurie Thomas filled the bill with a worthy cast consisting of FUSION regulars and a few new faces. Overall, the performance level is above par, with a few exceptions. Wylie's sense of timing is well-used on the cantankerous Max, though it’s hard to believe he’s as old as his character’s supposed to be. Wiles is splendid as Sam, bringing a spark of relative purity to a chaotic household. FUSION newcomer Vialpando immediately establishes himself as a strong presence on stage, playing Lenny as if he were the star of a British cult flick like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Lopez, also debuting with FUSION, portrays Joey as a teddy bear with a violent streak, at the end revealing his true gullibility. It's clear Lopez has to fight to bring Joey out of the dumb boxer stereotype, but overall his performance works.
Holmes’ characterization of Teddy is easily the strongest of the production. Holmes is grounded, calm and cool even as Teddy's world shakes around him—an ease that helps Pinter's meticulously crafted words ring through. As Teddy's wife, Reid is equally levelheaded. Reid's execution is flawless, but a fundamental character choice keeps Ruth from fully earning a key moment at the end of The Homecoming. While it's understandable that Reid keeps certain aspects of Ruth's personality in check, that guardedness doesn’t allow hints to a major, life-upheaving disturbance to emerge. The result is a jarring encounter with Lenny that doesn't make much logical sense, leaving more than Pinter's intended confusion lingering at the end of the play.

Pinter is known as much for the silence within his plays as he is for his clever dialogue. Thomas takes advantage of many of these pauses in her directorial choices, creating long breaks between encounters to let tension build—both for the characters and the audience. But in other moments, the actors run over the lines. Whether by direction or nerves, a few scenes are rushed and nuances of Pinter's writing are lost. Ultimately, this didn't hinder the overall production, but it could have done better to highlight the literary beauty of The Homecoming.

Ultimately, this is a terrific first production for FUSION's new season. Pinter plays are like earworms, drilling themselves into your head to be processed and reprocessed. Jerry Springer should really consider commissioning Pinter to write a few story lines for his family-shattering talk show. As far reaching as Pinter's tales go, they hit so much closer to home than anything imagined by Springer's creative team."

John Lahr, 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."

Ben Brantley, New York Times:
"First of all, it really is that good. You would expect it to have shrunk over the years, the way buildings that loomed large in your childhood seem smaller when you revisit them. But...The Homecoming is every bit as big as its reputation.....It’s a bit like Picasso’s shockingly severe painting of Gertrude Stein from 1906, the one he predicted in time would resemble its subject. We may not have thought we saw ourselves in The Homecoming four decades ago. Now it feels like a mirror.”

John Wylie	JOHN WYLIE* returns to The Cell as "Max," the patriarch of Pinter's The Homecoming. He previously appeared in Laurie Thomas' Mad Hattr as Lewis Carol's father, "Archdeacon Charles Dodgson." He was recently seen as “Scroop” in the TASP production of Richard II and “Vincentio” in The Taming of the Shrew at the Albuquerque Musuem. He enjoyed playing “Dr. Prentice” in What the Butler Saw at the Desert Rose Theatre and “Hanrahan” in Below the Belt at Sol Arts. He recently appeared as "Donny" in the Vortex production of American Buffalo and was seen as "Kent" in the recent Vortex production of King Lear. John has three great daughters who have always taken him through the looking glass.
Jacqueline Reid	JACQUELINE REID* is a founding member of FUSION. Most recently at FUSION, she was "June" in JT Rogers' Madagascar. She directed FUSION’s world premiere of Mad Hattr, as well as last season's acclaimed Doubt and The Lieutenant of Inishmore. She appeared and directed in several works in last season's The Seven: New Works. She played “Beth” in Craig Wright’s Orange Flower Water, “Vera” in The Fat Man's Wife, “Catherine” in Suddenly Last Summer, “Amanda” in Private Lives, the title role in Hedda Gabler, “Laura” in The Glass Menagerie, “Stella” in A Streetcar Named Desire, “Dancer” in The Eight: Reindeer Monologues, “Kate” in The Taming of the Shrew, “Zelda Fitzgerald” in Bye, Bye Blackbird, “Anna” in Closer, “Elizabeth” in The Art of Dining, and “Maggie” in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Regional lead roles include Romeo & Juliet, Agnes of God, and Crimes of the Heart. Recent television credits include the series In Plain Sight, Unsolved Mysteries and True Confessions, in which she starred with Adam Arkin. She is a BFA graduate of The North Carolina School of the Arts.
Bruce Holmes	BRUCE HOLMES* most recently appeared with FUSION in Jen Silverman's award-winning The Education of Macoloco as part of The Seven: New Works. He made his debut here last season as "Christy" in Martin McDonaugh's The Lieutenant of Inishmore. In Seattle, he worked at A.C.T., Center Stage, AHA!, N.W. Shakespeare Ensemble, and The Empty Space Theatre. Favorite roles at The Space include “Pat” in The True History of Coca-Cola in Mexico, “Jess” in The Complete Wrks of Wilm Shakespeare Abridged, “Horace” in The School for Wives, “Bertozzo” in Accidental Death of an Anarchist and “Sgt. Match” in What the Butler Saw. In Idaho, Bruce performed with The Idaho Repertory Theatre as “Leon” in Voice of the Prairie, “Max” in Lend Me a Tenor, “Trevor” in Bedroom Farce, and as “Andrew” in I Hate Hamlet. In Washington D.C., he appeared as a longshoreman in Arena Stage’s Anna Christie, and “Pee-Wee” in Orpheus Descending. At the Washington Shakespeare Theatre, he appeared as “Sampson” in Romeo & Juliet. In Virginia, Bruce appeared as “The Narrator” in For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again at The Metro Stage Theatre. He received his B.F.A. from the University of New Mexico and his M.F.A. from the Professional Actor’s Training Program at the University of Washington.
Rick Wiles	RICK WILES has been performing and directing for over 55 years in live theater, movies and television, all over this country and New Zealand. He is familiar to Albuquerque audiences, having performed in most local venues. Recent local roles include: "John of Gaunt/ Gardener" in RICHARD II, "Les Kennkatt" in BOYS GET GIRL and "Danforth" in THE CRUCIBLE. He has acted professionally for the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, The Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, The Colorado Shakespeare Festival, among others. Until recently, he was a member of a relatively small group that held membership in Actors' Equity, The Screen Actors Guild, and had a PhD in Theatre at the same time.
Nick Lopez	NICK LOPEZ lives and plays in Albuquerque where he received his BA in Theatre from the University of New Mexico. His Masters in Performance is from West Virginia University. Since he first got lost looking for the bathroom and ended up on the stage, he's played "Picasso" in Picasso At The Lapin Agile, "Leontes" in A Winter's Tale, "Edmund" in King Lear and "Bernard" in Sexual Perversity In Chicago. He was seen recently in the award winning short film Food For Thought and the soon-to-be released Klown Kamp Massacre. This is his debut with FUSION Theatre Company.
Demet Vialpando	DEMET VIALPANDO† is making his debut with FUSION. He has been an Albuquerque-based actor for ten years and currently is a theatre major at the University of New Mexico. He has appeared at the Adobe Theatre, Riverside Rep., Vortex and Albuquerque Little Theatre. Mr. Vialpando will appear in FUSION's production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman this fall at the The Cell. He also will be seen in the new cable series Crash premiering in October.
	* member Actors Equity Association, the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States † Equity Membership Candidate