The Homecoming – Footnotes
The Footnotes to our episode on Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming include notes about Vivien Merchant as the original Ruth, Ruth and Lenny not visiting Venice, the sibling rivalries on display, and Pinter’s “comedy of menace”.
Not listened to the episode yet? You’ll find it here.
The original Ruth
Harold Pinter married the actress Vivien Merchant in 1956, and in the early 1960s she played many of the major roles in his plays, including Ruth in The Homecoming in the original London production, on Broadway and in the film version. It is interesting to think about how the writer comes to imagine his wife in the character that Ruth becomes. Pinter claimed that he wasn’t consciously writing the part for her, “but I suppose I was doing a good deal of that nevertheless, consciously or not”, he said, “she seemed to walk into the roles. It was always on the cards that she would play them. It was unquestioned. But – it’s curious this – I never thought of her when I was writing the plays. I am convinced this is true. At the time they were produced, they seemed to have been written for her, but while I was writing the plays I never thought of her. The character of Ruth was not Vivien. It was Ruth.”
It is perhaps difficult to fully credit Pinter’s claim, albeit the connection may have been more subconscious as he suggests. Joan Bakewell suggested that the characters Vivien played may have been an embodiment of Pinter’s own sexual fantasies – there is certainly an element of male fantasy in the plot of The Homecoming. Bakewell said “Vivien always played the parts …as Harold wanted them to be. Which was very 60s sexiness…but covered in a veneer of gentility.” Of course Bakewell had a very personal interest and insight into Pinter’s creative instincts as she was actually having an affair with him while he was married to Merchant, including during his writing of The Homecoming.
Vivien Merchant and Ian Holm in the Broadway production of The Homecoming
The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1967
Lisa Diveney as Ruth and Joe Cole as Lenny
Young Vic Theatre, December 2023
Photo by Manuel Harlan
Ruth and Lenny
Ruth and Lenny are paired off as combatants from their very first meeting. She stands up to his initial intimidation – as Matthew rightly pointed out in the podcast, she has had previous experience in dealing with this type of man. There is a lovely detail that Pinter includes almost in passing that signals their connection as the play unfolds. During their first meeting when Ruth tells Lenny that they have been to Venice, Lenny replies: “You know, I’ve always had a feeling that if I’d been a soldier in the last war – say in the Italian campaign – I’d probably have found myself in Venice.” It is a piece of targeted bravado on Lenny’s part at that point. Later in Act 2 when Teddy tries somewhat pathetically to appeal to Ruth to leave to go home, he says “You liked Venice, didn’t you? It was lovely, wasn’t it? You had a good week. I mean…I took you there”, to which she replies, “But if I’d been a nurse in the Italian campaign I would have been there before.” It is certainly a statement of independence on Ruth’s part – she could have led another life and made her own way there without him – and the echo of Lenny’s imaginary war visit also deftly aligns them, suggesting they may have been, or could still be, together in an alternative life.
Sibling Rivalries
The tensions and teasing that characterise the relationships between the men are often expressions of nothing more than common sibling rivalry. Max and Sam ‘s petty squabbles have likely been going on for a lifetime, as have the boys. Lenny particularly enjoys winding Teddy up, no doubt fuelled partly by rivalry over Ruth, but one suspects that Lenny would have a go at him in any case. Although Lenny tells Ruth that Teddy has “always been my favourite brother”, and that the family are proud of Teddy’s academic achievements, he is more likely jealous and resentful of his success and escape to America. He describes Teddy to Ruth as a “very sensitive man”, and goes on to say that he himself is also sensitive, but he tends “to get desensitised”, and to back up his point relates his story of punching the woman who asked him to help move the mangle. He’s certainly signalling to Ruth that he’s a different kind of man to Teddy.
Lenny later delights in picking an ironic fight with Teddy on his own ground – over philosophical ideas:“what do you make of all that business of being and not-being?”- he prods him. Teddy does not rise to the bait at that moment, but later he fights back by deliberately stealing and eating Lenny’s cheese roll. It’s an obvious regression to childhood spats, the pretence of politeness punctured. As Lenny says: “Well, Ted, I would say this is something approaching the naked truth, isn’t it? It’s a real cards on the table stunt. I mean, we’re in the land of no holds barred now.” It’s simultaneously very funny, and loaded with threat between them.
When finally they suggest the idea that Ruth could stay, they pile in on Teddy, ratcheting up the attack with increasingly insulting details. Max asking Teddy to contribute to the kitty to support Ruth, Lenny proposing that they put her on the game, and worse, suggesting that Teddy could help promote Ruth to his academic acquaintances in America. It’s a vicious, “no-holds barred”, to use Lenny’s phrase, assault; the family pack devouring one of their own.
Joe Cole as Lenny and Jared Harris as Max
Young Vic Theatre, December 2023
Photo by Manuel Harlan
Comedy of Menace
A few years before The Homecoming, the theatre critic Irving Wardle coined the phrase “comedy of menace” to describe Pinter’s play, The Birthday Party. It is an artful description of the unique mix of humour and threat that characterises Pinter’s dialogue. The sense of menace is obviously rooted in the men’s frequent references to violence, but it is also there just in the dynamic of the dialogue between all of them. The director of the first production of The Homecoming, Peter Hall, said that Pinter’s writing ‘allows him to explore the instinctive hostilities between human beings. They fight duels not with swords, but with words and silences’. There’s menace in what they say and in the subtext of what they are saying, or not saying in the loaded silences. Pinter is of course famous for his frequent use of pauses in his stage directions, and Peter Hall recounted how in the rehearsal process for this play he reviewed with the cast every “dot and pause” in the text to assess the exact import or effect that was intended. He said, for example, there is a difference between “Silence” and “Pause” – the former marking a more substantial change for the character, the pause signalling some moment of crisis in their thinking. One can see from this how precisely the rhythm of the language is calibrated to create the tensions between the characters.
The other half of Wardle’s phrase, the unlikely comedy, comes partly from some simple universal tropes, such as the pettiness of the squabble between Lenny and Teddy over the cheese roll, or as Matthew perceptively pointed out in the podcast, our watching Max being enraged by his predicament, in the same way that we respond to Basil Fawlty’s furious frustration.
The deflective use of language, and the incongruity of its beauty and articulacy are also sources of the humour. Sam and Lenny’s exchange about Sam’s day driving to London airport, for example, is funny for its ordinariness, and the strange formality of the rhythm of the exchange.
We also commented in the podcast on the comedy that comes at times from the surprising, exaggerated eloquence of Lenny’s language, the best example being when he duels with Teddy over philosophical concepts, which is not only very funny, but also an attack on Teddy – comedy and menace.
The diction in his telling of the story of his meeting the sex worker under an arch is also unusual, where there is a contrast between the style of his language and the sordidness of what he’s describing. He uses oddly formal phrases such as “Well, this proposal wasn’t entirely out of order and normally I would have subscribed to it”, or “this lady was very insistent and started taking liberties with me down under this arch, liberties which by any criterion I couldn’t be expected to tolerate”, while then saying “so I clumped her one”. As Wardle suggests, we both enjoy the language and recoil at its meaning.
113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Published 24th August
Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.
As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.
112 – Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Follow the podcast Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | RSS | Follow the podcast
David Mamet’s modern American classic, Glengarry Glen Ross, is a blistering commentary on the cut-throat reality of the American dream, and its poisonous impact on those who have bought into the myth and machismo of that dream. The play had its world premiere in the small Cottesloe theatre at the National Theatre in London in September 1983, and was first performed in New York the following year, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Mamet also wrote the extended screenplay for the star-studded 1992 film version.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play was playing at the Old Vic theatre in London, with an all-female cast. This is a particularly provocative idea, because one of the primary themes of this play is masculine identity, and the salesmen in this Chicago office do not hold back in their display of machismo.
To explore Mamet’s unflinching slice of 1980s dog-eat-dog capitalism, I am joined by arts journalist Mark Lawson.
111 – The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Follow the podcast Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | RSS | Follow the podcast
Bertolt Brecht’s ‘gangster spectacle’, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, is both an exuberant and funny piece of theatre, and a chillingly topical political satire. Set in the 1930s Chicago of Al Capone, Brecht presents a parody of the rise of Hitler through the character of the gangster Arturo Ui. The play is a universal cry for vigilance against the rise of unscrupulous, populist leaders who threaten democratic societies and global peace.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play by the Royal Shakespeare Company was playing in Stratford-upon-Avon, starring Mark Gatiss as the title character.
I am delighted to be joined by both the show’s translator, playwright Stephen Sharkey, and by Brecht scholar, Professor Tom Kuhn, to guide us through Brecht’s political parody.
0 Comments