Theatre review: Homecoming

Published on Thursday 11 June 2009 18:58

HOMECOMING *** SOUTH LEITH PARISH CHURCH

THE Parable of the Prodigal Son transplanted to contemporary Leith, Alistair Rutherford's Homecoming promises a thoughtful examination of the state of the nation through familial ties but ultimately descends into sentimentality.

Sam walked out on his family 15 years ago to see the world, even staying away for his father's funeral. Yet his sporadic correspondence home, detailing a high life of celebrities, yachts and fast cars, ensures he remains the apple of his mother's eye, much to the chagrin of younger brother Harry and sister-in-law Angie.

Every year, the besotted Meg's slender hopes that Sam will return for Christmas are dashed, but this year, on New Year's Eve, the wanderer returns to his home turf, surveying a very different place to the one he left behind.

Meg and Sam's nostalgia for a bygone Leith, literally rose-tinted by the lighting rig when the latter speaks to the audience directly, is contrasted with Harry's frustrated cynicism about Hogmanay, the Homecoming Scotland campaign and the construction of tramlines "for the tourists". Supported by the hardier Angie, he halfheartedly rows with his mother about migrant workers. Yet having raised all these interesting issues, Rutherford awkwardly resolves them with predictable revelations about the brothers and a mawkishly pat ending.

Moreover, while he is strong on local colour, he scarcely allows his characters life beyond archetype, though Lorraine McCann and Allan Scott-Douglas as Meg and Sam invest their weary exchanges with something approaching reality.