South Coast Repertory Welcomes Home a Favorite Son

At South Coast Repertory, Shakespeare, Shaw and Moliere are the equivalent of Beethoven, Bach and Mozart--the big three most likely to be played and played again from decade to decade, season to season.

But Harold Pinter is the Beatles. David Emmes and Martin Benson are the ‘60s kids who launched South Coast as a tiny storefront in 1964, and Pinter’s plays hit the two dramatists much as the Fab Four hit a generation of rock musicians and rock fans. It was revolutionary and new, and it belonged to them. It reached them at a special time and in a special way, and it never has lost its hold on their artistic imaginations.

That is why Pinter is about to become the first living playwright to reach double digits at South Coast. The Costa Mesa theater has done Shakespeare 15 times, Shaw and Moliere 11 times each (counting Moliere’s “School for Wives,” which opens in January). “The Homecoming,” which begins previews today, will be the 10th Pinter production at South Coast--twice as many as the Globe Theatres in San Diego and A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle, its nearest rivals in Pintermania among major West Coast theaters.

During a recent interview, Benson, who is directing “The Homecoming,” cited Pinter’s impact on South Coast Repertory. Joining him was W. Morgan Sheppard, the veteran Anglo-Irish actor who has a history of his own with Pinter that goes back to the original London production of “The Homecoming” in 1965.

Benson, South Coast’s artistic director, and Emmes, its producing artistic director, say that their first Pinter play, “The Birthday Party,” was the theater’s first champagne moment. It was the Southern California premiere of a play British critics had torpedoed in 1958, sinking it after four performances. They hated its oblique, puzzling storytelling, its pause-laden dialogue and its mixture of humor and dread--qualities that came to define Pinter’s style.

Los Angeles Times critic Cecil Smith plunked himself into one of South Coast’s 75 seats one night in November 1965--the first time the newspaper had taken notice of South Coast Rep, according to Emmes. He raved.

After that, Benson said, “It was sold out to the walls. It put us on the map.” When the box-office returns came in, Emmes recalls, South Coast had topped a $500 weekly gross for the first time--reason to “splurge on a $5 bottle of champagne” from the liquor store across the street.

While Pinter was giving South Coast’s founders cause for celebration in 1965, he was causing a certain young actor nothing but trepidation. Sheppard was in the third of his dozen years as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and he was understudying the pivotal role of Max in the RSC’s world premiere of “The Homecoming.” Sheppard knew he was underage (the character is 70 years old) and under-rehearsed, and he recalls praying--successfully--that he wouldn’t have to go on.

Now Sheppard is 69 and certifiably qualified to be Max, having won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for his 1995 turn in the role at the Matrix Theatre. Playing this callous and spiteful old man was a pivotal career move, said Sheppard. When South Coast put out a casting call for Maxes, Sheppard, who moved to Los Angeles from England 13 years ago, was eager for more.

“He blew through the door larger than life, talking about taking turf,” Benson said. Despite his L.A. laurels as Max--in a production Benson didn’t see--Sheppard says that he knew the part and the play were deep and complex enough to allow him to discover new turf in the same lines. The big discovery for him this time, he says, has been Benson’s advice to play up the “relish” Max shows while verbally and sometimes physically abusing everyone else in his curdled family. This Max doesn’t just seek to dominate but pauses to enjoy his villainous handiwork like, as Benson puts it, “an artist savoring his own accomplishments.”

Emmes said that he and Benson have been less intrigued by later Pinter works that tend to be more overtly political; South Coast has not done anything more recent than “Betrayal” (1978), preferring to revisit what its leaders see as Pinter’s greatest achievements. The 10 productions at South Coast encompass six plays--”No Man’s Land” and “Betrayal,” plus four that have been done twice: “The Birthday Party,” “The Caretaker,” “The Homecoming” and “Old Times.”

These are not easy plays; their ultimate view of humanity is very dark, and they are elusive by design. For Sheppard, an evening at “The Homecoming” should have “the same fascination as [watching] a cage of reptiles.”

“The Homecoming” revolves around Teddy, an academic with a teaching post at an American university, who stops at his boyhood home in England after a trip to Venice with his wife, Ruth. The East End London house has been an all-male residence since his mother died. Teddy’s father Max is a retired butcher whose three sons still live with him. Ruth has never met any of the men, and the effect she has on the household generates most of the drama in the play.

Benson says that what keeps him coming back to Pinter is the characters’ comical yet horrifying vibrancy and the plays’ timeless insistence on probing parts of human nature that most of us spend a great deal of energy either covering up or denying.

“It takes us to places that we almost dare not look because we know we’re vulnerable.”

As for Pinter himself, he has not yet had a look at anything South Coast has done; for all Benson and Emmes know, he is unaware of the theater’s existence, much less its enthusiasm for his plays. “It didn’t cross our mind” to try to get Pinter to Costa Mesa to help mark his 10th production at South Coast, Emmes said. “Our reputation seems to continue to grow; maybe that’s something in the future we’ll be able to explore.”

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“The Homecoming,” South Coast Repertory’s Mainstage, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Previews begin today. Opens Oct. 19. Tuesdays to Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m. Matinees, Saturday and Sunday, 2:30 p.m. Ends Nov. 18. $19 to $52. (714) 708-5555.