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, an expatriate American philosophy professor; Lenny, who appears to be a pimp; and Joey, a would-be boxer in training who works in demolition. There is one woman, Ruth, who is Teddy’s wife. The play concerns Teddy’s and Ruth’s “homecoming”, which has distinctly different symbolic and thematic implications
After having lived in the United States for several years, Teddy brings his wife, Ruth, home for the first time to meet his working-class family in North London, where he grew up and which she finds more familiar than their arid academic life in America.
Much sexual tension occurs as Ruth teases Teddy’s brothers and father and the men taunt one another in a game of oneupmanship, resulting in Ruth’s staying behind with Teddy’s relatives as “one of the family” and Teddy returning home to America and their three sons without her.
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