The Homecoming by Harold Pinter

 

Families can be difficult beasts.  You got to live with them and you can’t choose who they are.  Strangely families no longer dominate stories in the way they once did and in some ways we are poorer for it as they can offer writers rich material to work from.  In Harold Pinter’s ‘The Homecoming’ becoming a successful son does not automatically mean occupying a position of power within your own family.

  Teddy, an academic living in America, has come back home to London with his wife to visit his family but some unpleasant intentions for her are revealed and Teddy is powerless to intervene.  Sexual tension permeates throughout this play as Teddy’s siblings are clearly sizing her up right from the very beginning and though outwardly his brother, Lenny, is very warm and loving underlining his actions is a desire for his wife, Ruth.  As much with Pinter the key theme is power play between individuals and treating people as property. 

  It is cold and though raising some emotion is, in itself, not very emotional, it is in some ways calculated and undoubtedly very precise in its use of language.  Indeed it’s precision is such that it cuts to the bone and chills to the core and this is one of the reasons why Pinter is considered to be one of the great playwrights in the last few decades.  His command of words is absolute and uses them to an exceedingly great effect.

  One feels sorry for poor old Teddy, a doctor of philosopher but unable to gain any real respect from his family and unable to protect his wife from their advances.  There’s nothing graphic in this play as most of the menace comes from what is being hinted at, from what is being suggested.  The comedy is present too.  Take this example of it:

‘Lenny:  …what do you teach?

Teddy: Philosophy.

Lenny:  Well, I want to ask you something.  Do you detect a certain logical incoherence in the central affirmations of Christian theism?

Teddy:  That question doesn’t fall within my province.’

Like ‘The Birthday Party’, and maybe all of his work, the comedy only increases the tension not relaxes it, as it should. 

  The world in a Pinter play is like our world only it is skewed and strange to the point of absurdity.  Something like a blend of Ionesco and ‘Eastenders’.  It’s still recognizable and the relationships, and the tensions writhing within them, are relatable yet it is almost as if they live in an alternative reality, something more akin to sci-fi than to kitchen skin.  This is what makes plays like ‘The Homecoming’ interesting because it takes something known, parent-child relations, and turns it into something unexpected, something weird and horribly funny that perhaps only the reaction of silence is the most appropriate response.

  It is in the family that a perfect hostage situation can appear, appealing to emotional blackmail better than any jobbing terrorist might, as it poses the question:  where do you turn when your family are turning against you?  No clear answer is made only audible questions after questions and then silence.

  Pinter is famous for his pauses, the Pinter pause as it came to be known because he used it so frequently in his work, and like his words uses it to extraordinary effect.  However the pauses aren’t really supposed to be pauses as Pinter in an interview once said that the stage direction beat was a more accurate word for what he wanted but silence reigns gloriously for dramatic effect.