The Homecoming – 1973 | 111 mins | Drama | Colour

Plot Synopsis

Harold Pinters The Homecoming was first performed in 1965. Peter Hall’s sensitive and faithful adaptation charts the smouldering hatred and resentment contained inside a North London family reunion and the battle of wills within. Outstanding performances from the ensemble cast come courtesy of Ian Holm, Cyril Cusack, Paul Rogers and especially Vivian Merchant’s charismatic Ruth.

Teddy (Michael Jayston) is a successful academic in the United States, and arrives at his family’s North London home in the middle of the night with his wife Ruth (Vivien Merchant), about whom the family know nothing even though the couple have been married for six years and have three children. The household is totally male: contemptuous father Max (Paul Rogers), a retired butcher, lives with his bachelor brother Sam (Cyril Cusack), a chauffeur, as well as Teddy’s two younger brothers, glib pimp Lenny (Ian Holm) and dim-witted boxer Joey (Terence Rigby).

Before Teddy and Ruth enter we witness some assumedly everyday interchanges between the family, under which lie simmering hatreds and resentments. Ruth appears ordinary enough, but rather than retire to bed she stays up and becomes involved in a provocative exchange with her husband’s brother Lenny. The increasingly surreal behaviour continues at the family and Ruth debate terms for her being set up as a prostitute working from one of Lenny’s flats.