Christmas 2007, day 3

MATINEE: Daniel Sullivan's revival of The Homecoming, with a glittering cast. This was very interesting, and probably as good a first-time in-house Pinter experience as I could find. Even so, the Pinter pauses and half-stated menace come off as at least a mite pretentious; you have to be willing to do the intellectual legwork yourself to connect the dots, and depending on your mood, that's either bracing and stimulating or frustrating and irritating. Even so, all props to the production for a high performance standard from this strong ensemble: Ian McShane and Raul Esparza both the right combination of fascinating and repellent, Eve Best appropriately opaque and magnetic, Michael McKean contributing a dash of charm and grace for contrast. James Frain, handed the hardest role to make sense of (Teddy), didn't quite solve it; as the punch-drunk Joey, however, Gareth Saxe could smack me around any time he likes.

EVENING: Young Frankenstein -- well, what to say? Ego and self-indulgence on parade for 2 1/2 hours. Sutton Foster, Andrea Martin, Christopher Fitzgerald and Shuler Hensley escape more or less intact, reputation-wise. I have never liked Roger Bart much, and this performance -- screechily convinced of its nonexistent comic genius -- pushed me away from his camp for good. Megan Mullally is equally disastrous: doubtless encouraged by all concerned, she avoids all contact with Madeline Kahn's model and just plays it like Karen Walker on steroids. Not one measure of Mel Brooks' "score" comes near the best items in The Producers (which I loved at its 2nd NY preview, even -- especially? -- without Matthew Broderick), and he and Thomas Meehan have taken a delightful film (Brooks' best by some margin) and cheapened and coarsened it in every conceivable way. (If there was a missed opportunity for the insertion of FUCK or SHIT or a tits/dick/ass joke, I can't see where.) Depressing.