Theatre review: The Woods

It might be long past time to add David Mamet to the pile of theatre creatives life's honestly way too short to be doing with: The Woods may be one of those rare shows that comes in slightly under the advertised running time, but it feels about twice as long. Dating from 1977, it's one of the battle-of-the-sexes plays Mamet really should have realised aren't his forte by now, and sees young couple Nick (Sam Frenchum) and Ruth (Francesca Carpanini) take a break at the remote cabin Nick inherited from his family. City girl Ruth is charmed and endlessly fascinated by the rural setting but Nick, who spent a lot of time at the cabin as a child, seems to associate the place with bad memories and be frightened of almost everything about the surrounding woods and lakes, to the point that you have to wonder why he ever agreed to return there in the first place. What he's probably really afraid of is being with his girlfriend in a place with no distractions, and having to confront what his actual feelings are.

Theatre review: Oleanna

David Mamet's most recent foray into gender politics provided the definitive unflushable theatrical turd of 2019, so the return of his much-more lauded 1992 play about the battle of the sexes inevitably raises the question of how well its arguments will have aged. After all, Mamet isn't exactly best-known for his great roles for women, and although Oleanna is largely thought of as one of his better plays it was met with as much controversy as it was praise, for reasons that become apparent in the final moments. I haven't seen the play before, so the transfer of Lucy Bailey's production from Bath to the Arts Theatre is an opportunity to fix that: Jonathan Slinger is John, a University lecturer in... I think maybe Philosophy, although his love of waffling self-importantly means it's often anyone's guess what he's actually talking about. It's no wonder his student Carol (Rosie Sheehy) seems so confused. Set entirely in John's office, Oleanna opens with Carol arriving for an unscheduled meeting.

Theatre review: Bitter Wheat

Let's face it, the prospect of an incredibly rare John Malkovich stage appearance has to be the main if not only draw to Bitter Wheat, David Mamet's new play which sounded like a pretty bad idea from the moment it was announced: A #MeToo-themed play officially not based on Harvey Weinstein but absolutely and undeniably based on Harvey Weinstein, if nothing else it seemed to demonstrate a remarkable tin ear to exactly whose story this is to tell. Or maybe Mamet is the best person for the job, in the sense that at least he got there before Neil LaBute. And who knows, maybe the play would surprise everyone and be much better than expected. But no, it's actually worse, because as well as hitting all the bum notes feared, it's also kind of... dull. In what I feel incredibly generous in describing as the plot, Malkovich plays Barney Fein (again, not to be in any way confused with Harvey Weinstein,) one of Hollywood's most powerful and feared movie producers, who we first see screwing over a writer by refusing to pay for the script he delivered.

Theatre review: Glengarry Glen Ross

According to Wikipedia, the Playhouse Theatre was designed by F.H. Fowler & Hill. A little-known fact about the architects is that they were semi-sentient, amorphous energy blobs who never actually met a living human being so assumed that, like the Fistyfelch people of Prang Centauri 9, our legs retract completely when we sit down. This is the only possible explanation for the seating in the Upper Circle, where you can't really accuse the audience of bad behaviour for moving around constantly when it's so obviously because they're in actual physical pain (I was on an aisle and there was nobody in the seat in front of me so I could hang my legs over the seat back, and that still wasn't enough leg room, and I'm not tall.) So the burden’s on any show staged there to hold the interest through the distractions; following Speed-the-Plow a couple of years ago, it’s again the turn of a David Mamet revival to try it.

Theatre review: American Buffalo

I don't really get what everyone sees in Damian Lewis, whose last stage appearance irritated me greatly, but I wasn't going to miss the chance to see John Goodman on stage - especially after his turn as one of the season villains on Damages. David Mamet's 1975 classic American Buffalo is what brings Goodman to London, to play Don, owner of a chaotic junk store. A few days earlier a customer paid him $90 for a rare buffalo-head nickel, and upon discovering that the man was a coin collector Don is convinced he got a lot less than its true worth for it. He has another buyer in mind but first he needs the buffalo back, and he plans to send in Bobby (Tom Sturridge,) a junkie he has a sort of fatherly care for, to burgle it from the man's house. Bobby's been casing the joint, and has seen the target leave with bags for what looks like a weekend trip away, so all seems to be ready.

Theatre review: Speed-the-Plow

Where the commercial theatre is concerned, the clue is in the name: The primary motivation is profit, it's just that some projects make this more obvious than others. It's clearly the reason for the current show at the Playhouse - Mamet's Speed-the-Plow was only at the Old Vic a few years ago, so I doubt anyone was crying out to see it again just yet, but it does feature a fairly high-profile, but not actually all that big, role for a young actress. Enter Lindsay Lohan, the former child star turned walking soap opera, and you've got a show that should generate plenty of column inches as she predictably goes off the rails. As it turns out Lohan, who joins Nigel Lindsay in Lindsay Posner's production, seems to have been getting on with the job; actually tonight it was the third star, Richard Schiff, possibly being punished for not being called Lindsay, who had lost his voice. So the role of Bobby was played by understudy Adam Morris - although let's call him Lindsay, so he doesn't feel left out.

Theatre review: Race

At some point David Mamet must have decided that dealing with a single inflammatory topic in 85 minutes wasn't enough for him, hence Race which covers both rape and racial politics in a legal drama that never actually sets foot in a courtroom. Following an ongoing sexual relationship with a much younger black woman, white millionaire Charles Strickland (Charles Daish) has been accused by her of rape. Having left his original lawyer, Strickland turns up at the offices of Jack Lawson (Jasper Britton) asking him to take on his case - the fact that Lawson's business partner Henry Brown (Clarke Peters) is black will, he hopes, stand in his favour with the jury. The lawyers aren't keen to take him on but an error by Lawson's protégée Susan (Nina Toussaint-White, who regenerated into River Song on Doctor Who) sees them legally bound to represent him. The race is now on to second-guess how the case's racial makeup will affect the jury, and find the one piece of evidence so compelling it'll override it.

Theatre review: The Shawl

The Young Vic's tiny Clare studio seems to be becoming the home for the winners of directing awards: Having already played host to the JMK winner, we now get the Genesis Future Director's Award winner, Ben Kidd. He brings an interesting dynamic to The Shawl, the short 1985 play in which David Mamet returns to his recurring theme of con-artists, this time looking at mediums whose comforting messages from the dead are entirely bogus - or are they? Kidd's production opens with a beautifully spooky touch: Merle Hensel's design sees chairs bolted down in a fairly haphazard-seeming in-the-round configuration, and as the audience take their seats a security camera's live images are shown on a number of TV screens, scattered around the cardboard boxes that line the walls. But when the play starts and Miss A (Denise Gough) enters, with some trepidation, for her first consultation with a psychic, the TV screens show her entering a deserted room, as if the audience are now spirits the cameras can't pick up.