REVIEWS ...
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Courtroom comedy is a hoot
By Christine Dolen
cdolen@herald.com
David Mamet knows all too well the shorthand that both fans and foes of his work would use to describe it.
Macho men onstage, each jockeying to become the alpha male. Dialogue that bursts like fitful gunfire. Language that tints the air blue. A view of women that makes feminists go nuclear.
Romance, the 2005 Mamet comedy that has just opened at GableStage, suggests that the scathingly clever playwright has had just about enough of that stereotyping. You want a Mamet sendup? He'll show you a Mamet sendup.
Romance is a farcical courtroom comedy purposefully devoid of the intricate, surprising plotting that makes Mamet's best stage and movie work so satisfying. Here, he's skewering biases, prejudices, stereotypes. Plot? Eh, who needs it? This time, Mamet would rather make you hoot and cringe.
Under Joseph Adler's direction, the GableStage production accomplishes both, thanks to a fearlessness in going for every one of the riotous, revolting bits that lard Mamet's script. It's rare that you think "this is great" and "this is awful" in a single evening, but at Romance you do -- several times.
The play takes place in a courtroom (handsomely rendered by designer Lyle Baskin, who gets even the worn-looking linoleum just right) during a Mideast peace conference. The defendant (Antonio Amadeo) is on trial for, well, something. His attorney (Bill Schwartz) is crisp, cool, clever. The paunchy prosecutor (Joe Kimble) keeps pressing the defendant, who proves an expert at Mametian verbal evasion.
The nutty judge (David Kwiat) has a tough time with attentiveness, due to an ongoing allergy attack, an ephemeral short-term memory and a tendency to thumb through skin magazines while the proceedings unravel. His stoic bailiff (Brandon Morris) tries to keep His Honor from overdosing on the allergy meds, to no avail.
The play also features the prosecutor's in-a-snit partner (Matthew Glass, who embraces the flamer stereotype so completely you pray Baskin used fire-retardant material in the set) and, briefly but vibrantly, a doctor (Paul Tei, who brings a welcome jolt of style and energy to the end of the show).
Oh, and we should mention, lest you're tempted to bring anyone with a remotely refined sensibility to this play: The props include a couple of objection-worthy sex toys, the larger of which the judge uses in lieu of a gavel.
Christine Dolen is The Miami Herald's theater critic.
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
A trial by fury
With Romance, Mamet has written a farce about hate. Funny, that.
By Bill Hirschman
David Mamet's impishly misnamed Romance may be the first flat-out funny farce about virulent hate.
Who else to mount such a show in South Florida but the joyously incendiary GableStage?
Although there are plenty of Mametian obscenities interlaced in the dialogue, what is far more obscene -- and yet terribly funny -- is the vile river of bile spewed forth about Jews, Catholics, homosexuals, WASPs and blacks. It's an equal-opportunity offender.
The pretext for the action is a criminal fraud trial being held in some American city, as Middle Eastern leaders arrive outside for peace talks. The first scene leans toward traditional comedy, with a befuddled judge becoming dysfunctionally distracted as the trial disintegrates into chaos. This is light years from Mamet's reverent screenplay about the law, The Verdict.
But it's the second scene where the play hits its core, a rancorous conference between the Jewish defendant and his Christian defense attorney. Brickbats ("Why did you go to law school if you don't want to lie?") devolve into stereotyping ("I hired a goy lawyer; it's like going to a straight hairdresser!"). Suddenly the sniping erupts in breathtakingly poisonous name-calling that would make Mel Gibson blush.
The audience initially struggles whether to laugh; there are gasps the first time an actor yells an unspeakable anti-Semitic slur. But mirth mounts at the supremely silly spectacle of people unable to cope with their situation and resorting to pathetic bigotry. There is also nervous laughter, perhaps even vicarious enjoyment, in witnessing such an unbridled expression of universal fury at life in general, no matter how hideous the comments.
The script is rooted in the dark humor of Joe Orton and social commentary of Lenny Bruce, made palatable by the fantastical nonsense of Lewis Carroll and the frenetic farce-for-farce's sake of the Marx Brothers. This mélange does not always fit smoothly together, and it sometimes feels as though Mamet can't figure out precisely what tone the piece should have.
Director Joseph Adler skillfully guides an energetic and uninhibited cast drawn from the GableStage stock company: Antonio Amadeo as the slippery chiropractor on trial; Matthew Glass as an over-the-top queen; Joe Kimble as the strait-laced prosecutor with a secret; Brandon Morris, whose performance as a bailiff is a master class in listening; Paul Tei in a cameo as a paramedic, Bill Schwartz as the anti-Semitic defense attorney, and David Kwiat as the addled judge who reads porn during testimony and keeps popping pills because he can't remember if he took his medication.
Still, it's an unsettling sensation to be chortling while someone throws acid in your face.
Bill Hirschman can be reached at bhirschman@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4513.
