THE BASIC QUESTION, PROBABLY, is where has Pinter been going since The Caretaker? From The Roam to The Caretaker, with one or two exceptions, his work seems all of a piece. It concerns people living pretty much alone and if or when they have made the crucial adjustment to society there will be time for them to think of other things. Pinter himself has always insisted that he deliberately chooses a brief but climactic moment in their lives, and that there is no reason to suppose that they do not have girl friends or political beliefs, but the impression remains of shabby people in shabby rooms threatened by enigmatic interior or exterior forces. In one of the "Comedies of Menace" the initial crude physical violence of The Room was gradually refined without in any way lessening the intensity, and with this refinement the comedy became more uncertain. Laughter at the later plays was often relief from what they were implying. Television liberated Pinter from his shabby room, or at least coincided with a movement out. His characters were younger, more elegant and articulate, and their apartments more spacious and tasteful. The battle for domination now centered obviously on sex. Characters are now "in society" and concerned with this particular, personal, relationship. Illusions and lies, always a part of the Pinter strategy (it has never been easy to tell where fact ends and fiction or fancy begins) are now used as an instrument for achieving or maintaining a relationship of a sexual kind with another person. But the expectations aroused by comedies like The Collection and The Lover were baffled by Tea Party and confounded by The Homecoming.