The Homecoming

For other uses, see The Homecoming (disambiguation).

The Homecoming
Written by	Harold Pinter
Characters	Teddy Lenny Ruth Sam Joey Max
Date premiered	June 3, 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 first published in 1965. The original Broadway production won the 1967 Tony Award for Best Play and 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 men who are related—Max, a retired butcher, and Sam, a chauffeur, who are brothers; 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; and one woman, Ruth, Teddy's wife. The play concerns Teddy's and Ruth's "homecoming," which has distinctly-different symbolic and thematic implications. Considering the play while surveying Pinter's career on the occasion of its 40-anniversary production at the Cort Theatre, in The New Yorker, the critic John Lahr writes: "'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" ("Demolition Man").

Characters

MAX, a man of seventy

LENNY, a man in his early thirties

SAM, a man of sixty-three

JOEY, a man in his middle twenties

TEDDY, a man in his middle thirties

RUTH, a woman in her early thirties

Setting

Pinter's text of The Homecoming describes the setting for the play as follows:

                                                  SUMMER

An old house in North London.

A large room, extending the width of the stage.

A square arch shape remains. Beyond it, the hall. In the hall a staircase, ascending up left, well in view. The front door up right.
A coatstand, hooks, etc.

In the room a window, right. Odd tables, chairs. Two large armchairs. A large sofa, left. Against the right wall a large sideboard, the upper half of which contains a mirror. Up left, a radiogram.

(21)

Plot synopsis

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 an Oedipal game of oneupmanship, resulting in Ruth's staying behind with Teddy's relatives as "one of the family" and Teddy returning home to America and their three sons without her.

Act one

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, obvious from their initial exchange: "What have you done with the scissors? ... Why don't you shut up, you daft prat?" (23). Max and the other men put down one another, expressing their "feelings of resentment," with Max feminizing his brother Sam, while, ironically, himself claiming to have "given birth to three grown men! All on my own bat": "What have you done? [Pause.] What have you done, you tit?" (55–56). Lenny and Max spar over who knows more about "the horses", particularly the "fillies"; Max claims that he does—"And he talks to me about horses" (25–26); Max's "dog cooking"; and his liking "tucking up his sons" (33). Max mocks Sam's inability to find his own "bride" (31–32), suggesting, abusively, that his brother is a homosexual: "it's funny you never got married, isn't it? A man with all your gifts.[...] A man like you"(30); "What you been doing, banging away at your lady customers, have you?" (30); "You leave it to others? What others? You paralysed prat! [...] What other people?" (31); "you bitch" (32); "You tit" (56); "Anyone could have you at the same time. You'd bend over for half a dollar on Blackfriar's Bridge" (64). He responds to his sons' complaints about his cooking with: "Go find yourself a mother" (32).

Teddy arrives ("in the middle of the night" [51]) with his wife, Ruth, whom he eventually discloses that he has married, in London, before leaving London for America, where they lived and had three sons together for the six years prior to his returning to the family home to introduce her (Teddy's "homecoming"). 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 severe problems in the marriage.

Whereas Ruth appeared both listless and restless around Teddy prior to his going up to bed without her, she appears energized by the encounter with Lenny (35–51) and even seems to relish gaining the upper hand over him, taunting him with a "name" his "mother" used ("Leonard" [49]) and then appearing to make him "some kind of proposal" over a clash over a "glass of water": "If you take the glass . . . I'll take you" (50), she threatens. Suggestively "draining the glass" of water, she goes upstairs to bed.

Max, awakened by the voices, comes down (51). Though he has the opportunity to do so, Lenny fails to reveal Teddy's and Ruth's arrival at the house and that they are staying in his old bedroom upstairs and instead engages in more vituperation with Max, as they bait each other, with Lenny asking about his conception, "that night" that his parents went "at it" and Max (in the past a butcher) threatening "You'll drown in your own blood" (52) and spitting at him (53). After some physical violence between Max and Joey, who has come home late, there is a "blackout" as everyone is in bed for the rest of the night, but "Lights UP leads to "Morning", Max's coming down to make breakfast for the clan and discovering, when Teddy and Ruth appear the next morning, later than they expected, because they "overslept", that they've been there all night without his knowledge: "I'm a laughing stock. How did you get in? [...] [referring to Ruth] Who asked you to bring dirty tarts into this house?" (57). It takes a bit of explaining, but finally he understands that Ruth and Teddy have married and that she is his daughter in law, and he offers Teddy a "cuddle," which Teddy tries to accept ("I'm ready for the cuddle") as Max exclaims, "He still loves his father!" (60), and Act One ends.

Act two

This act begins (61) with the men's ritual of sharing the lighting of cigars (choreographed in Hall's stage productions and film), ending with Teddy's cigar going out, prematurely and symbolically (Lahr, Casebook 47–48). That is followed by Max's sentimental series of reminiscences of family life with Jessie and the "boys" and his experiences as a butcher with what he describes first as "a top-class group of butchers with continental connections" and then reveals that "They turned out to be a bunch of criminals like everyone else"; with that sour acknowledgment, he also decides "This is a lousy cigar" and "stubs it out" (62–63).

After Teddy's marriage to Ruth finally receives Max's "blessing" (64–65), Ruth lets her guard down, relaxes, and reveals some facts about her previous life (before she met Teddy and "had all" her "children")—the turning point of the drama (66, 69–70), leading Teddy abruptly to suggest their returning home to America immediately (70). Apparently, he knows something about her past history about which the audience (and his brothers) are just getting an inkling. That life begins to emerge and to become further recognizable to the other men, as soon as brother Lenny initiates dancing with her; he turns her over to brother Joey (said to have a good touch with the ladies), who realizes, "Christ, she's wide open" and that "Old Lenny's got a tart in here" and begins to make out with her on the sofa, stopping to declare Ruth "Just up my street" and "better than a rubdown" (74–76). As Joey "looks up" from his first embrace with Ruth to Teddy and Max (husband and father), Max "looks at the [suit]cases" that Teddy has just brought down, in preparation for their premature and (Teddy seems to expect) imminent departure, slinging an initial barb: "You going. Teddy? Already?"

He continues, with irony:

next time you come over, don't forget to let us know beforehand whether you're married or not. I'll always be glad to meet the wife. Honest. I'm telling you. Listen, you think I don't know why you didn't tell me you were married? I know why. You were ashamed. You thought I'd be annoyed because you married a woman beheath you. You should have known me better. I'm broadminded. I'm a broadminded man. (75)

Then he "peers to see RUTH's face under JOEY, turns back to TEDDY" to say:

Mind you, she's a lovely girl. A beautiful woman. And a mother too. A mother of three. You've made a happy woman out of her. It's something to be proud of. I mean, we're talking about a woman of quality. We're talking about a woman of feeling. (75–76)

With comic timing, just at that very point, punctuating the irony of this assessment, "JOEY and RUTH roll off the sofa on to the floor" (76).

Ruth takes command of the men, barks her demands for "something to eat" and "drink" (which they attempt to fulfill), though she questions what they know about "rocks"—literally referring to drinks "on the rocks" with obvious phallic symbolic implications doubting their "manhood" (Lahr, Casebook 47–48)—as Lenny tries to assure her that their "rocks" are "frozen stiff in the fridge" (77).

Ruth goes upstairs for what they say later turns out to be a "two hour" sexual interlude in bed with Joey, without going "the whole hog" (82); Lenny, the "expert" in such sexual matters, according to the family, labels her a "tease" (82); Joey insists that "sometimes" a man can be "satisfied" without "going any hog," suggesting that Ruth is good at this "game" too.

While Ruth is still upstairs, getting dressed but perhaps not getting ready for their trip back to America (contrary to Teddy's apparently-residual expectations), Lenny and the others reminisce about Lenny's and Joey's sexual exploits, riffing on the theme of going "the whole hog," mocking Joey's "bird" requesting "contraception" and his doing whatever he wants without her consent.

By that time most of the "family" members (and the audience) have recognized Ruth to be unhappy in their marriage—except perhaps Teddy, who keeps insisting that she simply needs to "rest" but does, nevertheless, appear willing to leave her there, and Sam:

SAM. You're talking rubbish.

MAX. Me?
SAM. She's got three children.
MAX. She can have more! Here, if she's so keen.
TEDDY. She doesn't want any more.
MAX. What do you know about what she wants, eh, Ted?

TEDDY (smiling). The best thing for her is to come home with me, Dad. Really. We're married, you know. (86)

Appearing to ignore this reply, Max gets the idea for the scheme that leads to "Ruth's homecoming" and the denouement of the play (86–98):

MAX walks about the room, clicks his fingers.

MAX. We'd have to pay her, of course. [...] (86)

Lenny picks up on Max's idea: "you mean put her on the game" (prostitution). They expand on the notion of "inviting" Ruth to live with them, while she works part-time as a prostitute in considerable detail. For example. they consider Ruth's becoming a call girl with names like "Spanish Jacky" or "something nice . . . like Cynthia . . . or Gillian" (90). Their own "game" ("You mean put her on the game?" [99]), as they try to get back at Teddy, appears to have taken over their imaginations and they seem even to convince themselves of what at first appears absurd. It is hard to know whether or not they are serious or, as Max says to Teddy, "We're laughing" (87)—just joking (it seems, at first) at Teddy's expense: "What about you, Ted? How much you going to put in the kitty?" (87). They go so far as to ask Teddy if he can hand out "discreet" business cards (90) to his American colleagues, who might "pop over here for a week at the Savoy" and "need somewhere they can go to have a nice quiet poke," suggesting that "of course you'd be in a position to give them inside information" (90)—Will she "put out" or will she "tease" the other men as they perceive she did Joey?—in effect making him an accomplice in pimping his own wife.

Ruth comes downstairs "dressed" and presumably ready to join Teddy, who is still waiting with his coat on and their packed suitcases. In the interim, after telling her it was time to leave and sending her upstairs to pack and dress for the trip, he has come downstairs first and overheard and even joined in his brothers' and his father's plan, which they had launched while the couple was upstairs.

Teddy informs his wife, "Ruth . . . the family have invited you to stay, for a little while longer. As a . . . as a kind of guest. If you like the idea I don't mind. We can manage very easily at home . . . until you come back" (91), his pause suggesting that her return to America is dubious, even to him.

"Or," he tells her, without enthusiasm or conviction, to no response, "you can come home with me" (92). Ruth responds only to Lenny's jumping in immediately with a more-attractive (to Ruth) alternate proposal: "We'd get you a flat."

"A flat?" she asks (92), indicating that interests her more than returning to America with her husband, since she does not respond to Teddy's bland suggestion at all. The reply suggests that she wants to hear more.

She goes on to negotiate a "workable" business "employment" arrangement ("contract") for herself: "All aspects of the agreement and conditions of employment would have to be clarified to our mutual satisfaction before we finalized the contract," she tells them (92–93), ignoring Max's and Lenny's subsequent reminder that she would have to do some cooking and cleaning (94), and, as Teddy has already put it, "pull your weight a little" because "my father is not financially well off" (91). Ruth expresses, apparently sympathetically, how "sorry" she is to hear that.

Whatever its initial motivations, Ruth chooses to take "the family's" invitation seriously and to accept it, either actually or as a temporarily-convenient way to leave Teddy.

As Teddy leaves without Ruth, to return to America and their three sons, Ruth says "Eddie. Don't become a stranger" (96). Use of the unfamiliar nickname Eddie may connote that he has already become a stranger to her; that they are, as the play depicts from their entrance, an "estranged" couple.

Sam is still lying on the stage at their feet, having "collapsed" (or "croaked") after blurting out the secret about Jessie and Mac (94): "MacGregor had Jessie in the back of my cab as I drove them along" (94):

:He croaks and collapses.

He lies still.

They look at him. (94)

After acknowledging the possibility that he has died and the inconvenience that would pose for them, they mostly ignore him:

MAX. What's he done? Dropped dead?

LENNY. Yes.
MAX. A corpse? A corpse on my floor? Get him out of here! Clear him out of here!

JOEY bends over SAM.

JOEY. He's not dead.
LENNY. He probably was dead, for about thirty seconds.
MAX. He's not even dead!

LENNY looks down on SAM.

LENNY. Yes, there's still some breath there.
MAX (pointing at SAM). You know what that man had?
LENNY. Has.
MAX. Has. A diseased imagination.

Pause.

RUTH. Yes, it sounds like a very attractive idea.
MAX. Do you want to shake on it now, or do you want to leave it till later?

RUTH. Oh, we'll leave it to later. (94)

After that, Teddy, who has been silent throughout that exchange, expresses only some chagrin that he has lost his possible ride to the airport: "I was going to ask him to drive me to London airport" (95).

Ruth appears to have the power as the men appear to be meeting her demands, with Max, who by then has apparently realized that she may have gotten the upper hand in their negotiation (91–94), fearing that she might "do the dirty" on them after accepting the family's "invitation" to "stay on" under her "conditions" (95-96).

The final tableau vivant (96-98) depicts Ruth sitting, "relaxed in her chair," as if on a throne, with Sam lying "still" on the floor, Joey, who has walked "slowly" across the stage over to her, placing his "head in her lap," and Lenny, who "stands still," looking on. After repeatedly insisting "I'm not such an old man," worrying that Ruth might not "understand" "What . . . what . . . what . . . we're getting at? What . . . we've got in mind?", and repeating "I'm not an old man," getting no reply from Ruth, who remains silent, Max beseeches her, "Kiss me"—the final words of the play—as Ruth just sits and "continues to touch JOEY's head, lightly" (maternally, as it were), while Lenny still "stands, watching" (98). In this "resolution" of the play (its dénouement), what might happen later remains unresolved. Such lack of plot resolution and other ambiguities characterize most of Pinter's dramas (Merritt, Pinter in Play 1–4, 66–86, and throughout).

Symbolism and irony of title

In addition to the play being about Teddy's "homecoming," its ending suggests that another symbolic homecoming on a variety of levels is Ruth's. Symbolically, Ruth comes "home" to "herself" (rediscovers her previous identity prior to her marriage to Teddy) and to this woman-less (motherless, wifeless, sister-in-lawless) family (Max, Lenny, Joey, and Sam), ironically, in the process, rendering her own family with Teddy similarly without (mother, wife, woman).

By the end of the play, Ruth appears to have assumed the multiple roles of Jessie, the London family's missing wife and mother, the missing woman in their household ("mother/wife/whore"), while putting the American family of Ruth and Teddy in a parallel position, reversing the situation at the beginning of the play. In that sense, the play recalls Edward's reversal of roles with the silent Matchseller in Pinter's 1959 play A Slight Ache, initially broadcast on BBC Radio 3, and similarly-ironic plot and character role-reversals resulting from power struggles throughout many of Pinter's other plays (Merritt, Pinter in Play 101; Batty, About Pinter 39–41).

For many critics the missing wall in the house, "removed" after Jessie's death, symbolises the absent female influence. After Teddy "comes home" with his wife, Ruth, Max invites her to remain in London. She agrees, in effect, to "come home" as the family's missing mother figure and possibly also a prostitute whom Lenny can pimp, hence filling in the gap created when "their mother died": "I've never had a whore under this roof before. Ever since your mother died" (58). Upon first seeing Ruth, Max believes that his eldest son, Teddy, has brought a "filthy scrubber" (like Jessie) into "my house" (57–58). A major irony of the play is that Max's apparent mistaken first assumption comes to appear accurate as they (and the audience) get to "know" Ruth better (65–76).

Pinter's "Homecoming" is considered to be one of the best plays in Absurdist Theatre as it has been revived many times since its first premiere in London.

Critical response

A highly ambiguous, enigmatic, and (for some) even cryptic play, The Homecoming has been the subject of extensive critical debate for over forty years. According to many critics, it exposes issues of sex and violence in a highly realistic yet aesthetically stylized manner.

Brantley and other contemporary critics now often regard as "perfection" the two-act plot structure of The Homecoming. But, in the 1960s, the play's earliest critics complained that it (like Pinter's other plays) was "plotless", as well as "meaningless" and "emotionless" (lacking character motivation), finding the play "puzzling" and not "understanding" that it might have a multiplicity of potential "meanings".

Lahr considers The Homecoming to be

the last and best play of Pinter's fecund early period (1957–65). It is a culmination of the poetic ambiguities, the minimalism, and the linguistic tropes of his earlier major plays: "The Birthday Party" (1958), whose first production lasted only a week in London, though the play was seen by eleven million people when it was broadcast on TV in 1960, and "The Caretaker" (1960), an immediate international hit. "The Homecoming" is both a family romance and a turf war. ("Demolition Man")

The Homecoming directly challenges the place of "morals" in family life and puts their social value "under erasure" (in Derridean terms). Teddy's profession as an academic philosopher, which, he claims, enables him to "maintain . . . intellectual equilibrium"—

I'm the one who can see. That's why I write my critical works. [...] I can see what you do. It's the same as I do. But you're lost in it. You won't get me being . . . I won't be lost in it. (77–78)—

ironically raises basic philosophical questions about the nature of so-called "family values" and the "meaning" of "love" among family members (Lahr, Casebook; Merritt, Pinter in Play 90, 95–96, 194–96).

Occasionally, one finds critics of the play, aware of Pinter's reputation for ambiguity, questioning even Teddy's and Ruth's references to the fact of their "being married"; e.g., Sir Harold Hobson, as cited by Merritt (Pinter in Play 221–25): "Hobson's interpretation of Teddy as merely pretending to be Ruth's husband and a professor of philosophy enables him to rationalize the man's behavior toward his wife"; basing her viewpoint on a personal interview with Hobson, Merritt considers Hobson's review of the first production of the play, entitled "Pinter Minus the Moral", concluding: "although Hobson still describes The Homecoming as Pinter's 'cleverest play,' his judgment against the play's 'moral vacuum,' like his denial of Teddy and Ruth's marriage, suggests his personal distress at the portrayal of marriage and what Pinter has called the characters' misdirected 'love.' " (224). To deny that Teddy and Ruth are really married is a common refrain in responses to the play. Aside from their behavior in the play and that of Teddy's father and brothers toward them, nothing else in the text contradicts Teddy's and Ruth's claims that they are married and that they have three sons. The more outrageous Ruth's and his family's actions, the more Teddy protests that they are married, leading some critics to believe that the man doth protest too much, though perhaps they may do so too (Merritt, Pinter in Play 221–25).

Continuing denial of the facts of Teddy's and Ruth's marriage and family may serve critics as a means of expressing their own rejection of what occurs in the play. Alluding indirectly to this critical pattern, Brantley observes, however, that, in time, the play may appear more realistic and more relevant to the lives of theater audiences than it may have seemed when they themselves were younger or more naive about the nature of marriage and family life. To those with strong religious values, like Hobson, the play appears immoral. Yet, to others, its moral value resides in its very questioning of commonly-accepted shibboleths about marriage and the family: "People who were originally put off by 'The Homecoming' may now find it too close to home. 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" (Brantley, "Theater Review: The Homecoming [Cort Theater]": E7). Other critics, like Lahr, remind their readers of the strong element of comedy in this play, as in many of Pinter's other plays ("Demolition Man").

Composition history

Pinter wrote The Homecoming in six weeks in 1964 from his home in the Sussex coastal town of Worthing, where according to theatre critic John Lahr, "the magnificent barrenness of the play’s North London setting was imagined as he sat at his writing desk overlooking gardens, within earshot of the sea." Pinter remarked that "it kind of wrote itself".

Pinter's close friend and fomer schoolteacher, Joseph Brearley, was visiting Pinter after he had written the play. “I gave him the play to read,” Pinter recalled. “I waited in another room. About two hours later, I heard the front door slam. I thought, Well, here we are. He doesn’t like it. About an hour later, the doorbell rang. I answered it. He said, ‘I had to get some air.’ He said, ‘It is your best.’ ”

Production history

Productions of the play have won major theater awards. For example, the 1967 New York production received four Tony Awards: the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play (Paul Rogers), the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play (Ian Holm), the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play (Peter Hall), and the Tony Award for Best Play (Alexander H. Cohen, prod.). A film of the play, also entitled The Homecoming and also directed by Peter Hall, was released in 1973; part of the two-season subscription series American Film Theatre in the United States, it is available on both VHS and DVD and distributed by Kino on Video ("Collection Two" [DVD box set]).

Selected past, recent, and current productions

Main article: Harold Pinter § Since 2005

London première

Royal Shakespeare Company. Dir. Peter Hall. With Paul Rogers (Max), Ian Holm (Lenny), John Normington (Sam), Terence Rigby (Joey), Michael Bryant (Teddy), and Vivien Merchant (Ruth). Aldwych Theatre, London. Opened on 3 June 1965. (Lahr, Casebook n. pag. [x])

New York première

"The first American production opened at The Music Box on January 5, 1967. With the exception of the part of Teddy, which was played by Michael Craig, the cast was as above" (Lahr, Casebook n. pag. [x]).

Radio broadcast

On 18 March 2007, BBC Radio 3 broadcast a new radio production of The Homecoming, directed by Thea Sharrock and produced by Martin J. Smith, with Pinter performing the role of Max (for the first time; he had previously played Lenny on stage in the 1960s), Michael Gambon as Max's brother Sam, Rupert Graves as Teddy, Samuel West as Lenny, James Alexandrou as Joey, and Gina McKee as Ruth (Martin J. Smith; West).

Broadway revival

The Tony Award-nominated 40th-anniversary Broadway revival of The Homecoming, starring James Frain as Teddy, Ian McShane as Max, Raul Esparza as Lenny, Michael McKean as Sam, Eve Best as Ruth, and Gareth Saxe as Joey, and directed by Daniel Sullivan, opened on 16 December 2007, for a "20-week limited engagement" through 13 April 2008, at the Cort Theatre. It received Tony Award nominations for Best Revival of a Play, Best Actress in a Play (Eve Best) and Best Featured Actor in a Play (Raul Esparza). It also received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble Performance.

Almeida revival

The Homecoming was also revived at the Almeida Theatre in Islington, London, from 31 January through 22 March 2008. The cast included Kenneth Cranham, Neil Dudgeon, Danny Dyer, Jenny Jules, and Nigel Lindsay.

Others

Other recent and "upcoming events" (updated periodically), including many past, current, and future productions of The Homecoming, are listed on the home page of Pinter's official website and through its lefthand menu of links to the "Calendar" ("Worldwide Calendar").

See also

• Characteristics of Harold Pinter's work

References

Main article: Bibliography for Harold Pinter

Batty, Mark. About Pinter: The Playwright and the Work. London: Faber and Faber, 2005. ISBN 0-571-22005-3 (10). ISBN 978-0-571-22005-2 (13).

Brantley, Ben. "Theater Review: The Homecoming (Cort Theater): You Can Go Home Again, But You'll Pay the Consequences". The New York Times 17 Dec. 2007, The Arts: E1. Accessed 17 Dec. 2007.

Esslin, Martin. The Peopled Wound: The Work of Harold Pinter. London: Methuen, 1970. ISBN 0-416-10910-1 (10). ISBN 978-0-416-10910-8 (13). [Periodically revised, expanded, and updated editions published as Pinter the Playwright.]

–––. Pinter the Playwright. 1984. 6th (revised) ed. London: Methuen, 2000. ISBN 0-413-66860-6 (10). ISBN 978-0-413-66860-8 (13).

Franzblau, Abraham. "A Psychiatrist Looks at The Homecoming." Saturday Review 8 Apr. 1967: 58.

"The Homecoming by Harold Pinter". South Coast Repertory webpage for its 2001-2002 season production of the play. Accessed 26 Feb. 2008. (Includes excerpts from books, articles, reviews, and other features, such as an article entitled "Pinter Comes Home to SCR", by Jerry Patch.)

Lahr, John. "Demolition Man: Harold Pinter and 'The Homecoming'". The New Yorker 24 Dec. 2007, "Onward and Upward with the Arts". Accessed 16 Dec. 2007. (Advance online version.) (6 pages online; 7 pages in printout.)

–––, and Anthea Lahr, eds. A Casebook on Harold Pinter's The Homecoming. New York: Grove Press, 1971. (Evergreen Original 3:553-A.) London: Davis-Poynter, 1974. ISBN 0-7067-0128-3.

Merritt, Susan Hollis. Pinter in Play: Critical Strategies and the Plays of Harold Pinter. 1990. Durham & London: Duke UP, 1995. ISBN 0-8223-1674-9 (10). ISBN 978-0-8223-1674-9 (13).

Pinter, Harold. The Homecoming. 19-98 in vol. 3 of Harold Pinter: Complete Works. In 4 vols. 1978. New York: Grove Press, 1990. (Rpt. in 1994 and subsequently re-issued.) ISBN 0-8021-5049-7 (10). ISBN 978-0-8021-5049-3 (13). (Parenthetical references to page numbers are to this text of the play.)

External links

• HaroldPinter.org – Official site of Harold Pinter. Includes information about past, current, and upcoming productions of The Homecoming and further information about international productions in the "Worldwide Calendar". (Note: There are sometimes typographical errors in material posted on the site; e.g., reviews are retyped and in the process sometimes errors occurred.)
• "A Conversation with Actor Ian McShane" (Max) – Charlie Rose, PBS, broadcast of March 24, 2008. ("A conversation with actor Ian McShane about his role in the 40th Anniversary Broadway revival of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming.")
• "1st Night Photos: Hall & Pinter at The Homecoming – What's On Stage, Almeida Theatre, London, 8 Feb. 2008. ["For 1st Night Photos, our Whatsonstage.com photographer Dan Wooller was on hand for the post-show party at the Almeida along with the company, Harold Pinter, Peter Hall and other first-night guests including Jonathan Pryce, Kate Fahy, Rula Lenska, Lindsay Posner, Anthony Page, Will Tuckett, Lolita Chakrabarti, Indhu Rubasingham, Douglas Henshall, Ralph Brown and Croatian playwright Tena Stivicic."]
• The Homecoming at the Almeida Theatre – Official webpage for the 2008 production. Hyperlinked sections of "Production details", "The Cast", "Creative Team", "Articles & Reviews"; "Read More", and "Gallery".
• ​The Homecoming​ at the Internet Broadway Database.
• The Homecoming on Broadway: The Story – Official site of the 2007–2008 Cort Theatre production. Hyperlinked sections of news, reviews, production and playwright information, photos, a blog, and other useful features, including electronic newsletter subscription service. (Home page in the Flash site not accessible [may be miscoded]; see archived version from 12 Oct. 2007.)
• Kino on Video – Official site of the distributor of American Film Theatre (In three box sets: "Collection One"; "Collection Two"; and "Collection Three"; The Homecoming is one of the DVDs in "Collection Two" (Box 2). UPC 73832902912.
• "Theater: 'The Homecoming' " – Online audio-visual feature focusing on the 2007–2008 Cort Theatre production, by Ben Brantley, The New York Times, 23 Dec. 2007, Arts & Leisure Desk.