Goldberg goes by many names, sometimes Nat, but when talking about his past he mentions that he was called by the names "Simey" and also "Benny". He seems to idolise his Uncle Barney as he mentions him many times during the play. Goldberg is portrayed as a Jewish man which is reinforced by his typically Jewish name and his appropriate use of Yiddish words. A revised and much-expanded version of Applicant is incorporated in the last scene of Act One of Pinter's play The Hothouse, wherein the character still called Lamb is "tested" in "a soundproof room" by Miss Cutts, the successor of Miss Piffs, and her colleague Gibbs. The setting is an old house in North London during the summer. All of the scenes take place in the same large room, filled with various pieces of furniture. The shape of a square arch, no longer present, is visible. Beyond the room are a hallway and staircase to the upper floor and the front door. The Dumb Waiter’s setting is a bed-sitting windowless basement room, which is embellished with two beds in a depressing and heavy environment. The setting and its furniture are all depicted extremely realistically and one can see the important stuff of domestic life. Pinter himself dramatizes the picture of the room on the very beginning of the play as follows. This is a brilliantly written play by Pinter that is directed and performed to almost perfection. If only all plays in the West End were this good? Intriguing, funny, mysterious, fascinating, gripping, this play has it all!

This interview was first published in Mel Gussow, "Pinter's Plays Following Him out of Enigma and into Politics", The New York Times, 30 December 1988: C17, as cited in Susan Hollis Merritt, "Pinter and Politics," in chap. 8, "Cultural Politics" of Pinter in Play: Critical Strategies and the Plays of Harold Pinter (Durham and London: Duke UP, 1995) 179. [Petey's line is one of two epigraphs for Pinter in Play; the other is Goldberg's line relating to the theme of social conformity discussed in criticism of the play by Sinko [as cited by Hinchliffe] and others: "Play up, play up, and play the game" (Cf. The Birthday Party in The Essential Pinter 92).] Pinter's comment on Petey's line from Gussow's 30 December 1988 New York Times interview with Pinter is also cited by Gussow in his "Introduction" to Conversations with Pinter, which refers to the edited version of the interview as reprinted in the "December 1988" section of the collection entitled "'Stan, don't let them tell you what to do'" (65–79): "In conversation in 1988, Harold Pinter said that he lived that line all his life. That stubborn individuality has been a chief motivating factor for the playwright, whether he was rejecting his call up for national service as a young man, or, later in his life, reacting to censors, dismissive critics or nations undermining human rights. In the broadest sense, Pinter has always been a conscientious objector, even as people keep trying to tell him what to do" (9).a b c Ben Brantley, "Theater Review: The Homecoming (Cort Theater): You Can Go Home Again, But You'll Pay the Consequences", The New York Times 17 December 2007, The Arts: E1, 7, accessed 10 March 2014. BEN. A man of eighty-seven wanted to cross the road. But there was a lot of traffic, see? He couldn’t see how he was going to squeeze through. So he crawled under a lorry.

According to Pinter's official biographer, Michael Billington, in Harold Pinter, echoing Pinter's own retrospective view of it, The Birthday Party is "a deeply political play about the individual's imperative need for resistance," [ citation needed] yet, according to Billington, though he "doubts whether this was conscious on Pinter's part," it is also "a private, obsessive work about time past; about some vanished world, either real or idealised, into which all but one of the characters readily escapes..From the very outset, the defining quality of a Pinter play is not so much fear and menace –– though they are undoubtedly present –– as a yearning for some lost Eden as a refuge from the uncertain, miasmic present" (82). The Birthday Party" – Photographs from the Irish Classical Theatre Company's 2007 production, dir. Greg Natale. ("All photos by Lawrence Rowswell"; also includes production details.) Richardson, Brian. Performance review of The Caretaker, Studio Theatre (Washington D.C.), 12 September 1993. The Pinter Review: Annual Essays 1994. Ed. Francis Gillen and Steven H. Gale. Tampa: U of Tampa P, 1994. 109–10. Print. A film of the play, based on Pinter's own screenplay and also entitled The Homecoming and directed by Sir Peter Hall, was released in 1973. It features most of the original 1965 Royal Shakespeare Company cast and became part of the two-season subscription series American Film Theatre in the United States, available on DVD and distributed by Kino Lorber. [19] List of selected productions [ edit ] See also Harold Pinter#2001–2008 The Homecoming is a two-act play written in 1964 by Harold Pinter and first published in 1965. Its premières in London (1965) and New York (1967) were both directed by Sir Peter Hall. The original Broadway production won the 1967 Tony Award for Best Play. Its 40th-anniversary Broadway production at the Cort Theatre was nominated for a 2008 Tony Award for "Best Revival of a Play".Poems Against War (2003). Eds. Matthew Hollis & Paul Kegan. Afterword Andrew Motion. (Incl. " American Football", by Harold Pinter [80].) Often considered to be a highly ambiguous, an enigmatic, and for some even a cryptic play, The Homecoming has been the subject of extensive critical debate since it premiered. [13] According to many critics, it exposes issues of sex and power in a realistic yet aesthetically stylised manner. With Teddy, Max, and Joey all looking on, Lenny kisses Ruth and then turns her over to Joey, who asserts that "she's wide open"; "Old Lenny's got a tart in here" (p. 74). Hinchliffe, Arnold P. Harold Pinter. The Griffin Authors Ser. New York: St. Martin's P, 1967. LCCCN 74-80242. Twayne's English Authors Ser. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1967. LCCCN 67-12264. Rev. ed. 1967; New York: Twayne Publishers, 1981. ISBN 0-8057-6784-3 (10). ISBN 978-0-8057-6784-1 (13). Set in North London, the play has six characters. Five of these are men who are related to each other: Max, a retired butcher; his brother Sam, a chauffeur; and Max's three sons: Teddy, a philosophy professor in the United States; Lenny, a pimp who only makes discreet references to his "occupation" and his clientele and flats in the city (London); and Joey, a brute training to become a professional boxer and who works in demolition.

The first American production opened at The Music Box on 5 January 1967. With the exception of the part of Teddy, which was played by Michael Craig, the cast was as above". [20] The Homecoming directly challenges the place of morals in family life and puts their social value "under erasure" (in Derridean terminology). Teddy's profession as an academic philosopher, which, he claims, enables him to "maintain ... intellectual equilibrium" —According to Billington, "The lonely lodger, the ravenous landlady, the quiescent husband: these figures, eventually to become Stanley, Meg, and Petey, sound like figures in a Donald McGill seaside postcard" ( Harold Pinter 76). Harold Pinter: The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, The Homecoming: A Casebook. Ed. Michael Scott. Casebook Ser. General Ed. A.E. Dyson New York: Macmillan, 1986. ISBN 0-333-35269-6 (10). Gus’s unawareness of his circumstances alters him to the person of questions. His inquiry about their job, situation, boss and organization or his consecutive complains about every little thing makes Ben and consequently the audience crazy:

While the title and the dialogue refer to Meg's planning a party to celebrate Stanley's birthday: "It's your birthday, Stan. I was going to keep it a secret until tonight," even that fact is dubious, as Stanley denies that it is his birthday: "This isn't my birthday, Meg" (48), telling Goldberg and McCann: "Anyway, this isn't my birthday...No, it's not until next month," adding, in response to McCann's saying "Not according to the lady [Meg]," "Her? She's crazy. Round the bend" (53). The play's staccato language and rhythms are musically balanced through strategically placed pauses. Pinter toys with silence, where it is used in the play and what emphasis it places on the words when they are at last spoken. This article has an unclear citation style. The references used may be made clearer with a different or consistent style of citation and footnoting. ( December 2019) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Audio interview with Harold Pinter, conducted by Rebecca Jones, BBC Radio 4, bbc.co.uk/today, 12 May 2008, World Wide Web, 14 May 2008.It's also worth considering how Lucy Kirkwood's east London identity is evident in her playwriting and also how her familiarity and skill with the sketch informs her work. Even without the rep system that was Pinter's inheritance, some fine actor-playwrights have been produced for the first time over the past year. Alexi Kaye Campbell's The Pride at the Royal Court had an intimate understanding of the kind of writing that makes actors fly. Anthony Weigh's play 2,000 Feet Away, which I directed at the Bush last year, concerned the forced eviction of child sex offenders and had the boldness to eschew a conventional "dramatic" trajectory and present, instead, eight scenes examining the impact of the law on a small community. Neither of these plays rivals the likes of 'The Homecoming' in terms of comedy, but there are plenty of laughs along the way. More importantly, both cast and creative team have tried hard, and successfully, to be faithful to the spirit of Pinter's work and the mood of the 60s - well worth seeing on that score alone.