The Homecoming Evaulation

The Homecoming was written in 1964, it premiered 1965 in London  and 1967 in  New York.


The playwright is Harold Pinter , Pinter was born and bread in Hackney ,London. He was born the 10th of October and died 24th December 2008. Pinter's career as a playwright began with the production of The Room in 1957.  Pinter is best known for his plays The Birthday Party (1957), The Homecoming and Betrayal(1978), his best known plays have all been adapted on screen. He has also directed and acted in his own film productions .


The main starting point is  Max the father talking with his son Lenny, Max is explaining a story that happened years ago but Lenny in his thoughts is ignoring him reading the newspaper but also saying to himself what is he on about. The main characters are Max (Father of 3 sons) a retired butcher in his seventies , Lenny apparently a pimp in his early thirties , Teddy a Philosophy Professor in his middle thirties who is married with 3 sons, Joey an aspiring boxer who works in demolition , Uncle Sam Max's brother a man of sixty three who is a chauffeur and Ruth Teddy's wife in her early thirties.There situations are pretty much having there own lifes and putting up with each other in the same house. Only man who's situaution is different from the faimly  is Teddy who lives in his own life in America with his wife.

The Designer of The Homecoming is Soutra Gilmour , I thought the design of the show was great , it really went well with the style of show and assisted the characters in a great way to make the show really stand out which it did. I like the setting of the living room with the grand chair for the father max located on the other side of living room with nothing surrounding it , it really stuck out to the audience. I liked the design of the back door it really stood out and was a big part of the show , so did the stairs  going down and up I liked the way it was designed in the corner. The whole design to me really made the whole show stand out.

The light designer of The Homecoming is Richard Howell, the lighting contributed a lot to The Homecoming to give the play a sense of mood. There was one part in the show were the lighting really stood out it was when a new scene was introduced the lighting would get lighter and the sound would get louder , then the character will come in everything would go back to normal. This was a great way of using lights to add an atmosphere to the play. They did this across the play this lighting affect gave the show an extra  pair of legs and assisted the play to be even more sucessful. They used this lighting effect to establish different parts of the day. They used this effect were all the characers came together in a line smoking this added a very dark mood at that time in the play.

In terms of costumes the actors wore it really suited there characters. The costumes always give an idea of what that character is like for example smart clothing shows us how muture that character is it could mean an intelligent/sucessful person , scruffy clohting would suggest imature , not well mannered abit of a joker you could say.  The costumes in The Homecoming really brought out the characters especially Teddy who is the most intelligent person out of the family from his clothing I could tell straight away that he was a sucessful and wealthy man. Uncle Sam had smart clothes I could tell he was a well matured man, Max from his clothing were just casual for men around his age. Lennie's clothes were casual for men in his error and Ruth clothes showed how wealthy she was. Clothing brings out peoples personality and from the clothing in this play it  really stood out for me it was a well designed play. The other son Joey clothign showed an early adult which was casual.

I enjoyed the piece I praise the cast and the design , lighting of the show all these elements of the show made the show sucessful. The cast were fantatsic actors what should out for me the chemistry between the Max and his sons at eahc others throats but I could see the love they had for each other. The lighting really brought out the show it was some of the best lighting effects I've ever seen , I would love one day to use lights that in one of my performances. The design was very good it really set the scene ,so we had a clear view of everything of what was going on. The only unsucessful things of the show was that why they presentend the character  Joey with such a deep voice I really didn't get that was it nescessary? The story was very confusing I didn't really get the concept of the show at all. Last thing is that the play was very sexist Was Harold Pinter trying to tell us how women were treated in the 60's?