Throughout his storied career, American playwright and auteur David Mamet has always delved into politics. If not blatantly, then with some sense of subtlety. Especially when it comes to the politics of relationships and one-upmanship. Whether it be sexual politics in one of his earliest plays, Sexual Perversity in Chicago (1974); politics of the scam in American Buffalo (1975); office politics in his Pulitzer Prize winning, Glengarry Glen Ross (1984); politics in, and out of, the classroom in Oleanna (1992); and more recently, the politics of the courtrom in Romance (2005), a certain political climate infiltrates nearly everything Mr. Mamet writes.
With his 2007 play, November, Mamet takes a poison pen to presidential politics and specifically, a presidential election. In November, Toledo Rep’s Edgy Rep Series takes a stab at political relevance a mere 3 weeks before Americans go to the polls. Fortunately, there is no better playwright to jackknife America’s obsession with parties, Democrat, Republican and Tea, than the man who said, “People may or may not say what they mean … but they always say something designed to get what they want.”
Quest for re-election
And what President Charles Smith wants to do is to remain president. Unfortunately, he’s hit the skids. His poll numbers are down, he’s running out of money for his campaign, and nuclear war is on the horizon. His staff has given up and his wife is planning for life after the White House. With all of this going on, President Smith has to find time to pardon two Thanksgiving turkeys from the slaughter. But Mr. Smith is not quite finished being Mr. President and a simple attempt at PR (the aforementioned turkeys play a major role in this) turns into an all out battle to win the hearts and minds of the American people in one last ditch effort to stay in the Oval Office for another four years.
While November is classic Mamet at his most hilarious, it is also one of his lesser efforts because with the advent of yuks, his sense of irony, wit and intelligence kind of fly out the window onto the White House lawn. But still, when writing strictly for laughs, very few contemporary playwrights do it better. And of course, there is the plethora of 4-letter, 7 letter and even 12- letter words for which Mamet plays seem to be best known. If you don’t want the kiddies suspended from school after repeating the language they hear in November, then you may want to get a sitter for this one. Of course, all this from the man who wrote a book in 2011 called, “On The Dismantling of American Culture”
(Sidebar, your honor — I must admit that I am more than a little perplexed that The Rep does not note, on the web or in publicity materials, that there are some serious language issues with “November”. There are some theatre denizens out there who would rather watch a dozen productions of “Fiddler on the Roof” than hear one “damn” in any other show. I’m just sayin’ …)
Mamet and politics
Hopefully, this is not Mamet’s last foray into the world of political humor. Recently he has been making noises that seem to announce an emergence into the world of politics (in his plays, if not in his personal life). Mamet recently said, “My interest in politics began when I noticed that I acted differently than I spoke, that I had seen ‘the government’ commit sixty years of fairly unrelieved and catastrophic error nationally and internationally, that I not only hated every wasted hard-earned cent I spent in taxes, but the trauma and misery they produced …”
If David Mamet is truly leaning toward an interest in writing about politics from behind his oversized spectacles, it can only be a good thing for the American stage. And, hopefully, that’s a platform that both sides of the house will agree on!
November, by David Mamet, will be performed as part of the Toledo Rep Edgy Readings Series on October 13, 2012 at 8pm at Pam’s Corner, 116 10th St. Tickets are $10.
