The least of The Homecoming's troubles is that it does not make sense. This only stirs the interpreters, professional and amateur, to greater heights of interpretative madness. Ambiguity and implication are, of course, valid and potent artistic devices, but if the whole scenario, on almost all levels, has to be supplied by the critic or spectator, who then is the playwright? Pinter's play, like all his others, depends on tricks of diametrical reversal, going from one extreme to the other and saying vague, hostile nothings that can be made menacing, portentous or deep.

The basic flaw of The Homecoming is that it is totally formulaic and predictable: every character, sooner or later, becomes the opposite of himself. (p. 345)

These instant contradictions extend to the whole play…. Now, people are often inconsistent, but they are not schematically self-contradictory. Nor are they, and this is the second big flaw...