Bitter Wheat - Garrick Theatre

This seems like the explanation the kind of people here would want to believe, but it makes no sense when you actually think about it. It is unlikely the general mentality and psychology of Glengarry Glenn Ross and American Buffalo Mamet is hugely different from current Mamet. Nothing he has stated in any interview suggests anything simple minded or self-pitying. Why would his "coming out" - relaying information about himself - affect his own writing? The answer is it wouldn't, but it would influence the perception of critics and detractors. The explanation you quoted is actually far more likely, but the obvious explanation is simply that he has just become complacent and lost his mojo.

So is any connection between Mamet's shift to the right and the negative reviews. The fact is a once-great writer has sadly lost the plot as ANY of his last 4 or 5 plays would attest. Tragic but true.

Still thinking about the audience reaction from yesterday.

Malkovich’s character is a caricature and watching it you cannot believe he would get away with the ‘wooing’ as portrayed and you watch his world fall apart and get a false impression that only an idiot would be taken in and ‘we’ would not be taken in if ever in that position.

What is missing is that the ploy has worked hundreds of times previously and these women were not idiots, given a choice between losing your dreams/livelihood and facilitating a monster how would you really react in that position.


Personally knew very little of the writers politics and had no impact on my view of the play, it is just a poor one-dimensional shallow depiction of a serial abuser where we are only shown the one time it failed, maybe if the first act was a ‘successful’ historical depiction and the second act what we see, giving us a true indication that most times these monsters succeed, people are intrinsically insecure and we naturally defer to powerful people who are able propagate the myth by using our own complicitness.

Today’s framing of Domestic Abuse being a left wing wishy washy principle is a further demonstration of this myth being propagated whilst a blatant misogynist continues to blind us with the evidence being in plain sight.

Urgh.

I didn't know anything about his politics and still thought it was mediocre. Especially compared to his earlier works. (Although that does explain all the cracks about liberals and Democrats.)

It’s almost irrelevant to compare critical reactions to the Republican conservatism of Kelsey Grammer with those aimed at David Mamet. Grammer, like a few other — a very few other — conservative actors in the US, is a mild-mannered guy who, for a living, gamely recites (or sings!) not his own words but those penned by others, and who thereby gets a certain pass from the profession’s overwhelmingly leftist critical/political class looking to pounce, denounce, and discredit whenever they can sniff out an ideological entrée.

David Mamet, on the other hand, even more than through his play and movie scripts, loudly projects his views via the bullhorn of public discourse, having “come out” in 2008 with a high-visibility article entitled “Why I Am No Longer a Brain-Dead Liberal.” His 2011 “The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture” is a fierce diatribe at what he considers the virulent excesses of the American left, including those of the compliant media. His somewhat earlier “True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor” skewers the sacred cow of method acting and its psychobabblic approach, as well as those persons within the profession, academics and commentators among them, who in his eyes have seriously derailed the theatrical process. Mamet’s views on these subjects are well-known throughout the industry.

Anyone who thinks that someone such as David Mamet — a person who not only strays from the dogmatic party-line but excoriates it as well — doesn’t pay severely, directly or otherwise, for these recent-career transgressions either is naive or has precious little knowledge of 1) the extreme bifurcation informing today’s political and cultural divide, especially in the US, or of 2) who exactly it is that determines and calls the shots that matter and what their political slant far-more-than-preponderantly is. And let’s surely include within this vortex the controlling, monospeak influence of Silicon Valley — in addition, of course, to that which had been exclusively regarded as the media.

Irrespective of whether Mr. Mamet’s most current play is any good or not, it will necessarily receive a critical drubbing — and a gleeful, sadistic one at that — unless, perhaps, he were to recant his apostasies.

Quentin letts seems to be the audience for this play...

Quentin loved it as well - 4 stars from him.

This comment tho' is total codswollop: .... it will necessarily receive a critical drubbing — and a gleeful, sadistic one at that

No one is LOOKING to bury Mamet's recent plays; they, alas, do that all too easily themselves. Sad but true.

Well the friendly suggestion wasn't to you and the OP didn't talk about the political context of the play, or the play at all, just how Mamet's personal politics might have affected his reputation and the plays critical reception.

Feel free to discuss the politics of the play but that wasn't the case here.

Do what you like. As I said my friendly suggestion wasn't directed at you so why you responded I don't know.

So, this is comfortably one of the worst things I have ever had the honour to sit through. Definitely Top 3, kept off the top by Steven Berkoff’s Salome which would be difficult to surpass let’s be honest.

There’s so much wrong it’s difficult to know where to start. This collection of words (to call it a play is too generous) is utterly incoherent. There is no sense to be made from it, ideas, people, what you think are plot points crop up and then vanish never to be seen again and in some cases never even to have any reference made to them again. It opens cold into what appears to be the middle of a scene between the Malkovich character and an unnamed writer, this puts you slightly off kilter as you have no investment in these people or what’s happening. After about 10 minutes this writer disappears and is next seen at curtain call, nothing in that scene has any bearing on the rest of the performance or is really referred to again. I would say three possibly four other people on the stage suffer a similar fate; there’s no real reason for them to be there.

Doon Mackichan is on the stage as what I assume is an executive assistant. There is no character, she is an empty vessel, a phantom, she could be played male, female, old, young, black, white, by an alpaca, and it truly would not matter. The only function of the part about which we learn nothing is to feed lines, quite frankly an ironing board with post it notes on would have been as effective. Not to critique the actress as what is she supposed to do? She is at a banquet of crumbs.
The only other person on stage is Ionna Kimbrook who has slightly more to work with but not much as her part is just there to allow lots of bad ethnic jokes/assumptions about her to tumble from the mouth of our ‘hero’. She has limited agency or what she has happens off stage.

It has crossed my mind that this might have worked better as a monologue given the short shrift offered most of the actors but ‘Barney Fein’ is poorly drawn himself and there is no root or core to the character that allows you a way in to feel sympathy, empathy or even a kernel of understanding. The laziness inherent in the writing can be seen from the name alone, I mean come on, make some effort. Barney seems to forget things, names, what’s just been said, why? What is this supposed to clue us in about the character, illegal drugs and alcohol play no part. Is he losing his mind? A powerful executive does not do that or wouldn’t be powerful for long.

There are lots of barbs towards liberals and Hollywood movies but they’re not new or especially clever. I smiled once in the whole two hours. There was one chap a bit further forward in the stalls that had clearly been at the giggle juice and was guffawing repeatedly. Perhaps he doesn’t get out much.

Malkovich, so John Malkovich. Well he wears fat suit for some inexplicable reason, which is not referred to for the first 50 minutes and then gets hammered into the ground repeatedly for the rest of the evening as though that suddenly explains everything. Sadly it’s not a big enough fat suit to actually make you realise it could be a problem (or not from the back of the stalls anyway). Was that actor’s vanity or just practicalities? It just goes on to the lengthening list of WTF? There is no modulation to the performance, every line is said with the trademark Malkovich mannered indifference, and there is no menace, humour, all just matter of fact. Bizarrely a couple of times he starts to flail his arms about like he’s attempting to power the national grid for a bit. As with everything else, it makes no sense. It’s like watching a silent movie actor over emphasising gestures.

As we were leaving, some of us agreed on the stairs that it was one of the worst things we’d ever seen, and bemoaning the talent behind it and how far they’d fallen not a representative sample obviously but kind of interesting. I overheard two people on the way to the tube, one saying to the other ‘I do like my plays to have some story’ which probably best encapsulates the evening

And message to the Garrick staff, SIT STILL during the performance, don’t send messages that go ‘boop’ on your phone at the back and for the love of all that’s holy put some WD-40 on that door at the back that you were constantly in and out of, It virtually had more lines than some of the characters the amount you used it.

Another point, the security staff seemed to be confiscating food. Is that even allowed?