For 40-plus years David Mamet has used theater to probe the sorer spots in the American psyche. In plays from American Buffalo to Glengarry Glen Ross and Speed-the-Plow, he’s shown how damaging the imperatives of self-reliance, self-interest, and self-preservation can be to people steeped in free-market capitalism. Trying to get ahead in such a system, especially if you’re starting near the bottom, is the surest way to lose your soul. His best plays dissect our collective neuroses with unsparing accuracy.
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But judging by his recent work, you might think he’s given up on examining the contemporary world—unless perhaps he’s been living in an unhinged, indecipherable America all his own for the past few years. Two of his recent major plays, Romance from 2005 and November from 2008, are almost completely divorced from the social and political realities they seem intended to satirize. Romance posits an American justice system in which a judge babbles incoherently throughout an entire case, sane adults think a bit of chiropractic might bring Middle East peace, and a prosecutor’s thong-wearing boyfriend can sashay into an active courtroom and end up in the judge’s lap. November features a sitting U.S. president who can’t remember his vice president’s name, talks about a looming foreign attack with his wife and a civilian visitor listening, and wonders whether his authority to pardon turkeys at Thanksgiving is in the Constitution. Mamet may have intended these two as farces, but the unmoored, scattershot plotting turns them into fiascoes.
The play unfolds in a slick, imposing conference room, convincingly realized by set designer Linda Buchanan using dark wood and floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Jack and Henry spend most of their time analyzing possible defense strategies. As the play’s title suggests, the salient feature of their every assumption, calculation, and conclusion is race. In the “public mind,” they explain, a rich white man accused of raping a black woman is presumed guilty. When Strickland argues that facts are more important than public perception, Brown immediately sets him straight. “Fifty years ago,” he says. “You’re white? Same case, same facts, you’re innocent.”
Through 2/19: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 and 7:30 PM, also Tue 2/7, 7:30 PM, additional 2 PM shows Thu and Sat from 2/2-2/11, Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn,312-443-3800, goodmantheatre.org. $24-$79.
