Lacerating remarks [also] pop up in Harold Pinter's The Homecoming, the upcoming Broadway retread of which had an open rehearsal for the press, giving us the week's must-attend revival meeting. James Frain (from The Tudors) plays the guy whose return home prompts so much havoc they need security. "It's not naturalistic," Frain told me. "It's a mythic, Greek-tragic family. I feel I'm pitching you a movie of the week. It's much more brutal and savage than that." I guess he's never seen anything on Lifetime. "It's wrong to use the word witty," he went on. "They're literally knifing each other with their speech." Baby, they can sit next to me any time! Speaking of backstabbing, with this being the very first day of rehearsal, who does Frain hate in the cast so far? "All of them," he said, laughing. "A**holes!"At another table, director Daniel Sullivan—a Tony winner but not an a**hole—told me he had a problem figuring out who the character of Teddy was, "so I sent Pinter an e-mail and he replied with a description that was more forthcoming than he'd ever been about anything." Joking, Sullivan wrote back, "Could you do the same for all the other characters?" "Pinter replied, 'No'," the director related to me, grinning. Knowing Pinter, I'm sure he actually wrote, "[Long, chilly silence] No."
Village Voice
October 30th, 2007