November
Ethel Barrymore Theater, New York
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★★
David Mamet’s new play is often “howlingly funny,” said Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune. But we expect more from “one of America’s greatest playwrights.” November is a political farce that pokes fun at presidential fecklessness as well as public debates over such topics as gay marriage and immigration. Nathan Lane plays President Charles Smith, a potty-mouthed, unpopular lightweight. Smith’s off-color jokes and incompetent mendacity make for a high-energy role in which Lane gets “to harness his legendary comedic expansiveness with the irascible darkness of his soul.” But Mamet gives him too little to do. “The premise of the play couldn’t be more stupid and tossed off”: With no chance to win a second term, this president is planning his library, and attempts to shake down the turkey industry for donations by threatening to alter the traditional Thanksgiving meal. You don’t leave November asking deep questions about our political culture. You ask: “What happened to David Mamet?”
He’s gone soft, said Ben Brantley in The New York Times. “November is a David Mamet play for people who don’t like David Mamet.” Though the playwright still fills scripts to overflowing with four-letter words and outrageous characters who have a talent to offend, the sting’s gone out of his satire. It hardly seems possible that November could have been written by the man who wrote American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross. Instead, Mamet’s grab bag of gags often seems like a lost work by Neal Simon. As lazily directed by Joe Mantello, it’s “played as an easy laugh machine, with lines thrown buoyantly into the audience like brightly striped beach balls.” Never mind that these stale jokes wouldn’t even be funny without the expert Lane delivering them.
Everyone holds Mamet to an unreasonable standard, said Mark Lawson in the London Guardian. Isn’t it enough that the man’s written a funny play about politics at a time when we could all desperately use a laugh? Some critics might have preferred a pointed satire about the current administration. But to be lighthearted rather than heavy-handed often pays artistic dividends. Mamet “never specifies the president’s party,” thus avoiding direct identification with President Bush. But Mamet’s play will tell future generations all they need to know about the Bush era. “Politicians can be defined by the fiction they inspire”: Nixon’s lies fueled conspiracy tales, and Clinton inspired tales of sex scandals. George W. Bush’s administration is probably best represented as farce.