The Homecoming
A philosophy professor brings his wife home to meet his family in North London, and the reunion curdles into something far stranger. Pinter never explains anything. The silences carry as much menace as the dialogue, and the dialogue is terrifying. It's a play about territorial power disguised as a family reunion.
A family reunion in a Cockney household curdles fast, and not every reader forgives what happens by the end. The sharpest pushback treats the plot as morally unbelievable outright, one reader writing “To make up a story so immensely wrong is unbelievable,” another summing the whole cast up as characters treating each other badly in a house that's “seedy and mean.” Several readers say the first act reads as gripping family drama, then lose the thread once the second act turns surreal, unable to say why the story needed that shape. One reviewer admits “I never thought I would give anything I read a one-star review” before doing exactly that. Critics reviewing recent revivals go further, arguing the shock value and sexual politics have simply dated, that the play “has not worn as well as expected.”
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
