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What Do I Read Next?
(Drama for Students)
Two of Pinter's early plays provide background to The Homecoming: The Birthday Party (1958), Pinter's first full-length play, contains all the hallmarks of Pinter's style and concerns;-The Caretaker, which opened April 17, 1960, at the small Arts Theatre Club in London, explores loneliness and power struggles among three men Centered on a tramp who is given a place to stay by a mentally damaged man, this play was Pinter's first major commercial success.
Pinter's Old Times (1970), delves into time and memory, which Pinter finds to be fluid and uncertain. It also further explores the inability of a man to fully know a woman or to possess her. It is a move away from the more realistic The Homecoming.
Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet shows the influence of Pinter, especially in the use of language, on the younger American playwright. The play was first produced in 1983 at the Royal National Theatre, London, at Pinter's suggestion.
Endgame by Samuel Beckett was first produced in 1957 in French at the Royal Court Theatre, London. This play has some of the qualities and concerns seen in The Homecoming: mutual interdependence of characters, hate, an enclosed environment, and the use of spare language and lack of specific background information Beckett is an acknowledged influence on Pinter.
Sexual Power by Carolyn Johnston, published by Alabama University Press in 1992, gives a feminist perspective on the American family from the seventeenth century to the present.