Five of these are men of the same family: Max, a retired butcher; his brother Sam, a chauffeur; and Max's three sons: Teddy, a philosophy professor in the United States; Lenny, a pimp who only makes discreet references to his "occupation" and his clientele and flats in the city (London); and Joey, a brute training to become a professional boxer and who works in demolition.

After having lived in the United States for six 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 academic life in America.

[2] 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.

He reveals that he married Ruth in London six years earlier and that the couple subsequently moved to the U.S. and had three sons prior to this visit to the family home ("homecoming") to introduce her.

The couple's mutual discomfort with each other, marked by her restless desire to go out exploring after he has gone to sleep, then followed by her sexually suggestive first-time encounter with her dangerous, and somewhat misogynistic, brother-in-law Lenny, begins to expose problems in the marriage.

[3] Max's subsequent sentimental pseudo-reminiscences of family life with his late wife, Jessie, and their "boys" and his experiences as a butcher also end abruptly with a cynical twist.

Apparently, he knows about her history as "a photographic model for the body" (p. 73) and about which she reminisces when talking to Lenny alone after Teddy has gone upstairs "to pack" for their return trip to the United States.

Lenny, whom the family considers an expert in sexual matters, labels Ruth a "tease," to which Teddy replies, "Perhaps he hasn't got the right touch" (p. 82).

Teddy also says, in the play's only poignant turn of phrase, "She'd get old ... very quickly", which concern Max dismisses, citing the new National Health Service.

Having spoken up a few times earlier to voice his objections, Sam blurts out a long-kept secret about Jessie and Max's friend MacGregor, then "croaks and collapses" and "lies still" on the floor (94).

After repeatedly insisting he is not an old man, and getting no reply from Ruth, who remains, as usual, tactically silent, Max beseeches her, "Kiss me" – the final words of the play.

[6] By the end of the play, Ruth appears to have assumed the multiple roles of Jessie, the family's absent wife and mother, the missing woman in their household ("mother/wife/whore" in terms used by critics), while putting the American family of Ruth and Teddy in a parallel position, thus ironically reversing the situation at the beginning of the play.

[7] For many critics the missing "back wall" in the "large room" of the house described by Pinter as "removed" (p. 21) and by Teddy as "knocked [...] down to make an open living area" after Jessie's death (p. 37) symbolises the absent female influence.

91–96) to fulfill his obligations, Ruth agrees to "come home" (p. 92), by refusing to honor any longer her now defunct obligations as wife and mother, to more than willingly take up her part in the family business (so to speak) as well as succeeding the late Jessie (Max's wife and his sons' mother), filling the gap created by and since the other woman's death (pp.

On first seeing Ruth, Max believes that his eldest son, Teddy, has brought a "filthy scrubber" into "my house", adding, "I've never had a whore under this roof before.

When her husband insists she is "not well" (p. 85) and simply needs to "rest" (p. 71), Teddy is clearly both downplaying and ignoring the cause and extent of her discontent, even depression, draping his words in almost Victorian modesty.

Surveying Pinter's career on the occasion of the 40-anniversary Broadway production of the play at the Cort Theatre in The New Yorker, the critic John Lahr describes the impact of experiencing it: "'The Homecoming' changed my life.

[12]The Homecoming directly challenges the place of morals in family life and puts their social value "under erasure" (in Derridean terminology).

Susa Hollis Merritt, however, criticised this view: "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.

'"[18] Denial of the facts of Teddy's and Ruth's marriage and children may act as a means of expressing rejection of what occurs in the play.

[15] Ruth's actions contrast greatly with the expected behaviour of a 1960s housewife, particularly as audiences are never shown this life - their sons names and ages are never revealed.

Alluding indirectly to this critical pattern, Brantley argues that, in time, the play may appear more realistic and relevant to the lives of theatre audiences than it may have seemed when they themselves were younger or more naïve about the nature of marriage and family life.

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.

[12] 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."

A film of the play, based on Pinter's own screenplay and also entitled The Homecoming and directed by Sir Peter Hall, was released in 1973.

It features most of the original 1965 Royal Shakespeare Company cast and became part of the two-season subscription series American Film Theatre in the United States, available on DVD and distributed by Kino Lorber.

With Paul Rogers (Max), Ian Holm (Lenny), John Normington (Sam), Terence Rigby (Joey), Michael Bryant (Teddy), and Vivien Merchant (Ruth).

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, directed by Daniel Sullivan, and produced by Buddy Freitag, opened on 16 December 2007, for a "20-week limited engagement" through 13 April 2008, at the Cort Theatre.

The cast included Kenneth Cranham, Neil Dudgeon, Danny Dyer, Jenny Jules, and Nigel Lindsay.

[28] The play was chosen by Lusaka Theatre Club as its entry for the 1967 Zambia Drama Festival, and was awarded prizes for best production and best actor (Norman Williams as Lenny).