Mamet (for shame) courts cheap laughs
NEW YORK - This was a double-feature day, starting with the matinee of a new play imported from Dublin's Abbey Theatre as part of the Public Theatre's "Under the Radar" Festival. Terminus, by Mark O'Rowe, is terrific, full of crazy violence and wild language (it's all in rhyme, kind of like Irish rap without music). It's inventive, risky, and completely engrossing.
NEW YORK - This was a double-feature day, starting with the matinee of a new play imported from Dublin's Abbey Theatre as part of the Public Theatre's "Under the Radar" Festival.
Terminus
, by Mark O'Rowe, is terrific, full of crazy violence and wild language (it's all in rhyme, kind of like Irish rap without music). It's inventive, risky, and completely engrossing.
I mention this because those are the kind of things people used to say about David Mamet - back when he was writing
American Buffalo
and
Glengarry Glen Ross
. The wizard of obscenity seems to have abandoned all those exciting qualities in his new comedy,
November
, for the very sort of prepackaged commercial success he used to skewer with such glee (consider
Speed-the-Plow
). This is a string of funny one-liners, a two-hour-long skit whose punch line you forget before you're a block away from the theater.
Nathan Lane (I know, I know, you're laughing already) stars as President Chucky Smith, an incompetent who is about to lose his bid for reelection because, as his chief of staff (Dylan Baker) tells him, "you've [expletive] everything you've touched." Coasting on the knee-jerk liberalism of the theater audience, Mamet expects and gets wild applause.
The plot, slim as it is, turns on Chucky's obsession with creating his presidential library; distressed that he'll be going home broke, he perks up when the National Association of Turkey By-Products Manufacturers asks him to do the usual and "pardon" the Thanksgiving turkey. The going rate for the deed is $50,000, but greed and extortion drive it up to $200 million ("I want a number so high even dogs can't hear it").
Meanwhile, the president's speechwriter, Bernstein (Laurie Metcalf), has a quid pro quo in mind as well: Smith should sanction her marriage - televised - to her lesbian partner in exchange for the great speech she just wrote for him. Bernstein gets to make the show's big, passionate speeches about democracy and humanity - and it's significant that it's the spin doctor who has the only lines of substance. (Her character actually makes no sense - why would somebody who seems so decent and solid work for such a man, in such a job?)
Trying to distract the American public from his latest disaster, the president says, "Raise the panic level!" "Nobody cares," the chief of staff replies. "Nobody cares about the panic level?? After all our work???"
Chucky leaves "the Iran guy" on hold. He tells the Israeli guy, "You people got along without a country for 2000 years." And so on and so on.
The laughs are plentiful as Mamet cruises on easy Bush-bashing;
November
seems to be the shallow byproduct of our general disgust with politics, the collateral damage of a communal cynicism.
November
Written by David Mamet. Directed by Joe Mantello. Sets by Scott Pask, costumes by Laura Bauer, lighting by Paul Gallo.
Cast:
Nathan Lane (Charles Smith), Dylan Baker (Archer Brown), Clarice Bernstein (Laurie Metcalf), Ethan Phillips (Turkey Guy), Michel Nicholes (Dwight Grackle).
Playing at
Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 243 S. 47th St., New York. Tickets: $46.50-$99.50
Information: Telecharge 800-432-7250.