That said, the play itself is less deeply satisfying than the craft and feeling invested in it by its cast (which also includes the excellent C.J. Wilson, in a smaller and less interesting role) and its director, Broadway and TV survivor Joseph Hardy. It is a British play from the 1970s, and it feels very British and very '70s. Quiet, slyly metaphorical, and less puzzling (at least to jaded 21st-century eyes) than it means to be, "Home" is the kind of play that felt fresh and truthful then but seems a little too artful now. It's beautifully done, but it's been done.
Of course, by now you're wondering what the heck it's about, and that's the trick: I can't tell you, because the chief point of the play is for the true situation of the four characters to dawn slowly on the audience and then gradually reveal itself as a kind of symbol for the fading days of empire, or the anomie of modern humanity, or free-floating existential dread, or - well, you know. Anyway, let's just say that these four middle-to-later-age people chatting in a walled garden are not quite what they seem, and that "home" can mean a lot of different things.
So. Goodwin's Harry is a meek, timid little man, prone to trailing-off sentences and unexpected weeping. Jack, played by Easton, is heartier and full of bluster, a storm of anecdote and opinion whirling about the quieter Harry. The conversations between them that open and close the play are marvels of acute observation, delicate timing, expertly balanced shifts of focus, and subtle characterization through gesture and tone - in short, of acting.
The women - Ivey's Marjorie and Maxwell's Kathleen - are more broadly written, but the performances here give them just as much nuance and particularity of character. Kathleen is livelier and funnier, but Ivey's way of playing with her teeth as Marjorie recalls old griefs could break your heart. Like the men, the women get a couple of duets that showcase their unobtrusive skill at shaping a scene and bringing characters to life. And when all four are onstage together - well, it's just a master class, that's all.
Sound designer John Gromada contributes some appropriate original music: tastefully restrained on the surface, but thrumming with tense strings and weird piano chords beneath. Tobin Ost's set, with dreamily obscure and ever-shifting clouds provided by Rui Rita's lighting, has all the old brick and rambling ivy you'd expect from an English garden. But it also manages to convey the underlying oddity of it all, just in case you were ever inclined to forget that there's no place like "Home."
Louise Kennedy can be reached at kennedy@globe.com.
