book: November (Vintage) | David Mamet ...

book: November (Vintage) | David Mamet ...

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	• November (Vintage) David Mamet Vintage, 2008 - 128 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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Mamet Doing Some Bottom Fishing

On Sunday, January 13, 2008, I saw the Broadway production of "November" with Nathan Lane. He was very funny in the role of a wisecracking President about to lose an election. The play was hilarious, but it was a slight Mamet effort, marred, I think, by the extreme overuse of a four letter expletive in all of its forms. After a while I saw the audience cringing at the use of the word, not because they were prudes but because its repetitive use became boring, annoying, grating, abrasive. One of our leading playwrights surely could have used his wide vocabulary to put in some other words. The play is a farce, a satire, a gag festival, but it is not great. Without Nathan Lane I believe it would have soon perished. As of this date it has twenty more performances to run.
The script does not read particularly well, and had I not seen it, I think I would like it even less. I haven't seen a recent play in which so much time is spent in telephone conversations with unseen, unheard "characters." It was an old convention of Broadway comedies that happily disappeared. "Get me Joe on the phone" etc, etc. The structure of the play is out of the nineteen twenties and thirties comedy cliché genre, and let's hope it's not resurrected too often.
Any excuse is made for a gag, a laugh line. Elements of the plot: The President is supposed to pardon the Thanksgiving turkey, President Charles Smith will do anything to garner money for his campaign, his presidential library and himself, his lesbian speechwriter has returned from China with her partner after adopting a baby, an Indian tribe wants a casino on Martha's Vineyard, bird flu may have been brought back from China, the President has a team of secret agents who can render his enemies to Bulgaria, and so on.
It's low grade Mamet by way of Neil Simon and Sid Caesar. It's comic; it's crude; it's over the top. It's a cynical look at presidential politics with yuks, but little intelligent wit or irony. One of our finest playwrights is doing bottom fishing when he should be deep fishing. While England's Tom Stoppard is regaling us with epic achievement of "The Coast of Utopia," Mamet is serving up schlock.
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David Mamet's new Oval Office satire depicts one day in the life of a beleaguered American commander-in-chief.

It's November in a Presidential election year, and incumbent Charles Smith's chances for reelection are looking grim. Approval ratings are down, his money's running out, and nuclear war might be imminent. Though his staff has thrown in the towel and his wife has begun to prepare for her post-White House life, Chuck isn't ready to give up just yet. Amidst the biggest fight of his political career, the President has to find time to pardon a couple of turkeys ? saving them from the slaughter before Thanksgiving ? and this simple PR event inspires Smith to risk it all in attempt to win back public support. With Mamet's characteristic no-holds-barred style, November is a scathingly hilarious take on the state of America today and the lengths to which people will go to win.

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