The Homecoming

The Homecoming
First edition (publ. Methuen & Co. Ltd.)
Written by	Harold Pinter
Characters	Max Lenny Sam Joey Teddy Ruth
Date premiered	3 June 1965
Place premiered	Aldwych Theatre, London
Original language	English
Subject	Family
Genre	Drama
Setting	Summer. An old house in North London.
Official site

The Homecoming is a two-act play written in 1964 by Nobel laureate Harold Pinter and it was first published in 1965. Its premières in London (1965) and New York (1967) were both directed by Sir Peter Hall and starred Pinter's first wife, Vivien Merchant, as Ruth. The original Broadway production won the 1967 Tony Award for Best Play. Its 40th-anniversary Broadway production at the Cort Theatre was nominated for a 2008 Tony Award for "Best Revival of a Play".

Set in North London, the play has six characters. Five of these are men who are related to each other: Max, a retired butcher; his brother Sam, a chauffeur; and Max's three sons — Teddy, an expatriate American philosophy professor; Lenny, who appears to be a pimp; and Joey, a would-be boxer in training who works in demolition. There is one woman, Ruth, who is Teddy's wife. The play concerns Teddy's and Ruth's "homecoming," which has distinctly different symbolic and thematic implications.

The setting is an old house in North London during the summer. All of the scenes take place in the same large room, filled with various pieces of furniture. The shape of a square arch, no longer present, is visible. Beyond the room are a hallway and staircase to the upper floor and the front door.

After having lived in the United States for several years, Teddy brings his wife, Ruth, home for the first time to meet his working-class family in North London, where he grew up and which she finds more familiar than their arid academic life in America.

Much sexual tension occurs as Ruth teases Teddy's brothers and father and the men taunt one another in a game of oneupmanship, resulting in Ruth's staying behind with Teddy's relatives as "one of the family" and Teddy and their three sons returning home to America without her.

The play begins in the midst of what becomes an ongoing power struggle between the two more dominant men, the father, Max, and his middle son, Lenny. Max and the other men put down one another, expressing their "feelings of resentment," with Max feminising his brother Sam, while, ironically, himself claiming to have himself "given birth" to his three sons.

Teddy arrives with his wife, Ruth. He reveals that he married Ruth in London six years earlier and that the couple subsequently moved to America and had three sons prior to his returning to the family home to introduce her. Ruth's and Teddy's discomfort with each other, marked by her restless desire to go out exploring after he goes to bed and followed by her sexually suggestive first-time encounter with her brother-in-law Lenny, begins to expose that there are problems in the marriage. After a sexually charged conversation between Lenny and Ruth, Ruth exits. Awakened by their voices, Max comes downstairs. Lenny does not tell Max about Teddy's and Ruth's arrival at the house and engages in more verbal sparring with Max. The scene ends in a blackout.