The Homecoming was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre in June 1965 and subsequently transferred to Broadway, where it won the Tony Award for Best Play. It is Pinter’s most powerful and most disturbing work — a play that audiences find simultaneously repellent and compelling, and that has generated more critical controversy than any other play of the postwar British theater.
Teddy, a philosophy professor at an American university, brings his wife Ruth home to meet his family in their North London house: his father Max, a retired butcher; his uncle Sam; and his brothers Lenny (a pimp) and Joey (a boxer). Over the course of the evening, the family — all male — claim Ruth. She is offered a position as prostitute and mother-substitute; Teddy leaves without her; Ruth appears to accept the arrangement on her own terms. The play ends with Ruth sitting in authority while Max crawls toward her begging for affection.
What makes the play endlessly debatable is the question of Ruth’s agency: is she a victim, claimed and exploited by predatory men? Or is she the winner — the figure who has assessed her options and chosen power over the sterility of her marriage to Teddy? Pinter refuses to answer, and both readings are fully supported by the text. The play is also about class (the collision between intellectual Teddy and his brutal working-class family) and about territory (who owns the house, who belongs, who is the outsider).
Collecting The Homecoming
First edition (Methuen, London, 1965): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $100–$300
- Without jacket: $20–$50
- Signed copies: $300–$800