Cambridge Marriage: Mamet at the A.R.T

far left: William H. Macy and David Mamet in rehearsal for Mamet’s Oleanna, photo: Brigitte Cambridge Marriage: Lacombe; bottom left: Felicity Huffman and Shelton Dane in the A.R.T.’s production of The Crytogram, photo: Henry Horenstein; left: Felicity Huffman and Rebecca Pidgeon in the Mamet at the A.R.T. A.R.T.’s production of Boston Marriage, photo: Richard Feldman; below: Brooke Adams and Tony Shalhoub in the A.R.T.’s production of The By Sean Bartley Old Neighborhood, photo: Richard Feldman Times and engaged academics in heated of the most fascinating women on the debate. No other Mamet play has inspired contemporary American stage. As Felicity critics to spill so much ink. Huffman, who played the mother, told the After a performance, a female student Boston Herald: asked the playwright whose side he was on, the strutting macho professor’s or “He writes difficult, challenging roles the guerilla feminist’s. “I’m an artist,” for women, but he also writes difficult, Mamet replied. “I write plays, not political challenging roles for men. No one’s the propaganda. If you want easy solutions, hero. There wasn’t a hero in The Cryp- turn on the boob tube. Social and political togram, but it has a brilliant part for a issues on TV are cartoons; the good guy woman. No one’s the hero in Speed-the- wears a white hat, the bad guy a black hat. Plow. He gives his women, along with Cartoons don’t interest me.” the men, really difficult jobs to do, and DAVID MAMET’S MARRIAGE with the “I write plays, not political propaganda. If you After The Cryptogram’s success, manners, was Mamet’s homage to Oscar the courtroom’s solemnity is shattered. A.R.T. was brokered by an unlikely Mamet penned The Old Neighborhood, a Wilde. Starring Felicity Huffman and Spurned lovers and sadistic doctors arrive, go-between: Anton Chekhov. In 1988 want easy solutions, turn on the boob tube…” trio of short plays starring Tony Shalhoub Rebecca Pidgeon as feuding lovers, the hurling cookware and bodies across the Robert Brustein, a long-time Mamet and his wife Brooke Adams. The pieces play featured Mamet’s first all-female room. By the time the near-comatose collaborator, commissioned the play- Although in Oleanna Mamet created you can get so mad at his women. In follow Bobby Gould, a man who tries cast and was set in a turn-of-the-century judge declares his verdict, such bedlam wright to adapt Uncle Vanya. Brustein saw a complex feminist firebrand, the play Speed-the-Plow, for example, the only to reconnect with his Chicago roots. By drawing room. The title was a nineteenth- has arisen that the audience never learns Mamet, famous for his spare but poetic also used Mamet trademarks—testos- female character has the tough and often going back to his past, Bobby hopes to century euphemism for a loving attach- the charges against the defendant. language, as the perfect choice to render terone-drenched dialogue and physical maligned job of speaking the truth. So I find the strength to move forward into the ment between women. Claire, the older of Chekhov once quipped: “There is Chekhov’s dialogue into contemporary violence. With his next play at the A.R.T., don’t think it’s true that Mamet doesn’t future. In an interview with A.R.T. Literary the two, has snagged a wealthy protector. nothing new in art except talent.” During American rhythms. According to Brustein, Mamet explored a new path. Set in a write well for women. He’s certainly writ- Director Arthur Holmberg, Mamet revealed “Is he married?” asks Anna, her young his two decades at the A.R.T., Mamet has the production, starring Christopher living room rather than a male workplace, ten well for me.” the identity crisis at the play’s core: lover. “Why would he require a mistress,” stretched his prodigious talent in unex- Walken, was “an act of deconstruction The Cryptogram dramatizes the tension Claire responds, “if he had no wife?” Anna pected ways. Freed from the commercial designed to exhume the living energies of between a boy and his mother as they HOLMBERG: Although they both try, nei- has her own surprise. She wants to use pressures of Broadway, the playwright Chekhov’s writing from under the heavy struggle to deal with the parents’ divorce. ther Bob Gold in Homicide nor Bobby Claire’s boudoir to seduce an even younger used the A.R.T. stage to break new ground: weight of ‘masterpiece topsoil.’” When their worlds collapse, the two turn Gould in The Old Neighborhood seems to woman. The younger woman turns out to he took on new genres, expanded his Four years later at the A.R.T., Mamet to and on each other. Tinged with tender be able to find any kind of meaningful be the protector’s daughter as the convo- linguistic registers, and enlarged his scored an incendiary hit directing his new bitterness, the play shows an astonishing way to be Jewish in the United States. Why luted plot bubbles and boils and thickens. gallery of female roles. With Romance play Oleanna. Starring William H. Macy capacity to dramatize the fragile world of a do they both fail? Mamet’s elegant dialogue, dotted with he presents A.R.T. audiences with his and Mamet’s wife Rebecca Pidgeon, the ten-year-old who, eager to go on a fishing MAMET: Because they’re Jewish in the polysyllabic epigrams, showed new colors wackiest dramatic world yet. piece tackled sexual harassment in the trip with his father, cannot fall asleep. United States. on the author’s linguistic palette. wake of the Clarence Thomas and Anita “When is Dad coming home?” the boy With Romance, Mamet tackles Sean Bartley is a second-year dramaturgy Hill train wreck. A controversial success keeps asking his mother. But the father Mamet’s next play, his fifth at the courtroom farce. At first Mamet’s trial, student at the A.R.T./MXAT Institute for in Cambridge and New York, Oleanna never comes home. In this semi-autobio- A.R.T., caught critics and audiences off presided over by a pill-popping judge, Advanced Theatre Training. inspired roundtables in The New York graphical work, Mamet also created one guard. Boston Marriage, a comedy of seems ordinary enough. Soon, however, 10 AMERICAN REPERTORY THEATRE ARTicles 617.547.8300 www.amrep.org 11 William H. Macy and David Mamet in rehearsal for Mamet’s Oleanna, photo: (?) A Mamet Reunion Short Works, Long Histories: SEXUAL PERVERSITY IN CHICAGO AND THE DUCK VARIATIONS By Sean Bartley David Mamet, Harold Pinter, ORIGINALLY, THE PAIRING of David moments of Sexual Perversity, Bernard and Mamet’s short plays Sexual Perversity Danny sit beside Lake Michigan ogling in Chicago and The Duck Variations was women in bikinis. The women ignore and Shel Silverstein pragmatic rather than artistic. A marriage them as the men dish out insults: of convenience, the decision to perform By Scott Zigler the two works as a double bill in their 1976 (They watch an imaginary woman pass in premiere justified a full ticket price. Strong front of them.) parallels, however, exist between the two works, particularly in their male friend- BERNARD: Hi. GEORGE: Eh? ships. Emil and George, the chums of The DANNY: Hello there. (Pause. She walks by.) EMIL: Only a few farmers know this. Duck Variations, may be viewed as older BERNARD: She’s probably deaf. GEORGE: Yeah? versions of Bernard and Danny, Sexual DANNY: She did look deaf, didn’t she. EMIL: The mating of ducks is a private Perversity’s randy twenty-somethings. BERNARD: Yeah. (Pause.) matter between the duck in question and DANNY: Deaf bitch. his mate. Take this exchange from The Duck Variations: GEORGE: Yeah? The Duck Variations begins with Emil EMIL: It is a thing which few White men GEORGE: Where? and George alongside the same lake. have witnessed . And those who claim EMIL: Look at her will ya! But instead of drooling over babes, they to have seen it . Strangely do not wish to GEORGE: That? contemplate the ducks. speak. EMIL: What else? Go, sister? Both Bernard and George are masters GEORGE: There are things we’re better off of comic exaggeration. For Bernie, the not to know. And a similar sequence from object of hyperbole is sex. In increasingly EMIL: If you don’t know, you never can be Sexual Perversity: absurd stories, he describes lovemaking forced to tell. inside a plane, underwater, and in a hotel GEORGE: They don’t got those beaks for BERNARD: Lookit this. room in flames. But George, Bernie’s The nothing. DAVID MAMET ENJOYED longtime friend- of Mamet’s play Oleanna, which had its form play in developing both their craft DANNY: Where? Duck Variations counterpart, has more on ships and collaborations with both Harold world premiere at the A.R.T. and their discipline as writers; they have BERNARD: There. his mind than sex. Trying to impress the But despite the parallels, Sexual Pinter and Shel Silverstein. His most Mamet’s two best-known collabora- each acknowledged that it is extremely DANNY: Oh yeah. importance of pollution upon his friend, Perversity and The Duck Variations have interesting collaboration with Pinter was tions with Silverstein are the screenplay important in the life of the writer to always BERNARD: My sweet goodness. George spins his tallest tale: “They’re been divorced from one another for on the film version of Catastrophe, a play for the film Things Change (which Mamet have something to work on, especially DANNY: Uh huh.

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