The Homecoming at FUSION Theatre

FUSION Theatre Company opens its 2008-2009 season with the New Mexico premiere of Harold Pinters’ award-winning play The Homecoming on Thursday, Septermber 4 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, FUSION welcomes Canadian actor Mairtin O’Carrigan who brings extensive theatre, film and television credits. The cast also features New Mexico professionals Bruce Holmes, Nick Lopez, Jacqueline Reid, Demetrio Vialpando, and Rick Wiles.

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 9/7 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.

Mairtin O'Carrigan and Demet Vialpando

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.”