Jackie Hoffman is one of the funniest people in New York. She is certainly among the most irreverent. So when the actress/comic takes the stage in Scraping the Bottom: The Most Offensive Songs of Jackie Hoffman at Joe's Pub in Greenwich Village Feb. 11 and 25, it's cause for celebration.
Currently starring as a muse in the Broadway show Xanadu, Hoffman revisits what she considers 14 of her meanest musical hits. She slices and dices her victims with care -- and while she is funny, she is never vindictive. Either you get grown-up humor or you don't. This round, she takes on immigrants, sex and kids, her favorite target. Belting out her numbers in a Liza Minnelli meets Ethel Merman style, Hoffman captivates. Her Jewish-oriented numbers are a scream, while her assault on family and love is a cynic's dream. Occasionally profane but never puerile, she takes on society's sacred cows - and gleefully skewers them with a witty remark and clever lyric.
A perennial Joe's Pub favorite, her performances are an easy sell. Her show The Kvetching Continues was the longest running in the club's history. And her roles in film, TV and theater are small but distinct. Even if you don't know her name, you've seen her face: the best friend in Kissing Jessica Stein, a triple role on Broadway in Hairspray, a blind man's girlfriend in Curb Your Enthusiasm. In each, she turns a physical gift for comedy and a distinct delivery into comic gold.
Scraping the Bottom captures Hoffman at her satiric best. Even a cancer scare doesn't stop her; instead, she works her hysterectomy into the act. Hoffman isn't afraid to challenge her audience. If you don't get the joke, the joke's on you.
While Hoffman's razor-sharp humor barely takes a breath, Harold Pinter is famous for his pauses -- which give the audience time, however brief, to absorb an annihilating remark. That's especially true in the Broadway revival of The Homecoming, now at the Cort Theater, where a family of feral animals greets the eldest son, Teddy. He's just returned to England after a nine-year absence.
Pinter, who has been accused of misogyny, lives up to his reputation here. The play may be a battle between the sexes, but it's the men who make the rules. Set in 1960 North London, a dysfunctional working-class family -- sons Lenny (Raul Esparza) and Joey (Gareth Saxe) are bullied by their father Max, a retired butcher (Ian McShane). Lenny has the same menacing quality as his father. Both share a contempt for women and a penchant for violence. Their lives, like their home, are crumbling. This sad collection of misfits is at cross-purposes. They don't talk to each other; they talk over each other, a Pinter specialty.
Max reigns as alpha dog, using his cane as a cudgel, though he cows his family, in part, by sheer force of personality. The lines about his putting his children to bed are chilling; The implication of abuse is subtle but evident. So is the weird sexual energy -- it's a household that needs a woman; yet repudiates the idea.
So when Teddy (James Frain) introduces his wife Ruth (Eve Best) into this toxic enclave, primal, darker passions are unleashed. Unlike Joey, a failed boxer, or Lenny, a small-time pimp, Teddy, is an accomplished philosophy professor, living in America with his three boys. At first glance, he's the most civilized; certainly, the most articulate. But when Max insists Ruth is a whore, Teddy's defense is perfunctory. In fact, Ruth exudes a sexual aura that attracts all the men in the household. For her, sex is power. Or at least, a powerful reaction to feeling trapped.
Because it's Pinter, the sordidness ratchets up. Each family member vies for control, but the endgame is submission. The idea that Ruth controls the men sexually would be more persuasive is she wasn't fulfilling their mother/whore fantasy. The title may be an inside joke -- Ruth and Teddy come home to their true selves, however hideous. But it's enough to send the more sensitive among us, despite a well-acted production, running for the door.