November: a nasty poltical satire that has director J.P. Kelly going for the jugular to produce excellent performances by all!
Steve Martin as Chief of Staff Archer Brown. Photo by David Pasho
This vicious satire of American politics by the author of Oleanna and Speed-the- Plow is one of the high points of the local English language season. It certainly came at the proper time, following as it did on the heels of Obama’s re-election after a very tight race. The play keeps throwing out references to 2008, the year Obama beat George W. Bush at the polls and it seems clear that Mamet felt compelled to vent his anger, his disgust, his frustration and his total disdain for this man who had already spent too many years as the leader of the American people. The portrait is devastating.
Set in David Magladry’s beautiful little box set, this is a tightly constructed play by one of the masters of contemporary American drama. It takes place in President Charles Smith’s Oval office during the election campaign. His rantings about his failing popularity, the plummeting polls and his unwillingness to accept the inevitable, are highlighted by his wife’s constant phone calls (Mamet loves phone calls that interrupt at the worst moments). He obsesses about leaving a “liberry” full of books about his own legacy as President and is infuriated by the absence of his speech writer Bernstein, whom he drags back from her holidays and drills when he needs her to rewrite American history in order to take vengeance on the Turkey breeders of America so that no one will buy their birds. All the while the war in Iraq is raging and Iranian (?) diplomats are trying desperately to get him on the phone. His perverted vision of history is certainly not for the faint of heart but it confirms everything else we learn about this abominable creature.
