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Post by bordeaux on Jun 23, 2019 8:43:52 GMT
It’s no coincidence — as in none whatsoever — that the critical reception of David Mamet’s plays and movies took a spectacular and irreversible nosedive following his double heresy of 1) ridiculing “method acting” and the cult behind it, and 2) coming out fiercely — as he does everything — as a Republican and conservative. Since Mamet has to have known that near-universal Broadway/Hollywood reprobation would be the inevitable outcome, his actions constitute a true profile in courage in today’s cultural and political climate. Even were he to write the next “Hamlet,” he’d be trashed for it. Alternatively: it is no coincidence that the quality of David Mamet's plays and movies took a spectacular and irreversible nosedive following his coming out as a Republican conservative. The simple-minded psychology and self-pitying plea for victim status which characterise modern American right-wing thought just don't sit well with great writing. |
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Post by londonpostie on Jun 23, 2019 9:28:43 GMT
Is there an interesting parallel with Trump-supporting Kelsey Grammer at the ENO : could un/conscious sentiment be part of the negativity .. /rhetorical
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Post by asfound on Jun 23, 2019 10:02:05 GMT
It’s no coincidence — as in none whatsoever — that the critical reception of David Mamet’s plays and movies took a spectacular and irreversible nosedive following his double heresy of 1) ridiculing “method acting” and the cult behind it, and 2) coming out fiercely — as he does everything — as a Republican and conservative. Since Mamet has to have known that near-universal Broadway/Hollywood reprobation would be the inevitable outcome, his actions constitute a true profile in courage in today’s cultural and political climate. Even were he to write the next “Hamlet,” he’d be trashed for it. Alternatively: it is no coincidence that the quality of David Mamet's plays and movies took a spectacular and irreversible nosedive following his coming out as a Republican conservative. The simple-minded psychology and self-pitying plea for victim status which characterise modern American right-wing thought just don't sit well with great writing. This seems like the explanation the kind of people here would want to believe, but it makes no sense when you actually think about it. It is unlikely the general mentality and psychology of Glengarry Glenn Ross and American Buffalo Mamet is hugely different from current Mamet. Nothing he has stated in any interview suggests anything simple minded or self-pitying. Why would his "coming out" - relaying information about himself - affect his own writing? The answer is it wouldn't, but it would influence the perception of critics and detractors. The explanation you quoted is actually far more likely, but the obvious explanation is simply that he has just become complacent and lost his mojo. |
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Post by bordeaux on Jun 23, 2019 10:25:15 GMT
Is there an interesting parallel with Trump-supporting Kelsey Grammer at the ENO : could un/conscious sentiment be part of the negativity .. /rhetorical I'm sorry but thinking that Kelsey Grammer got bad reviews for Man of La Mancha at the ENO because he is a Republican is classic right-wing self-pity. The Telegraph gave it two stars because they thought it was a bad show. |
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Post by lonlad on Jun 23, 2019 10:29:14 GMT
So is any connection between Mamet's shift to the right and the negative reviews. The fact is a once-great writer has sadly lost the plot as ANY of his last 4 or 5 plays would attest. Tragic but true.
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Post by londonpostie on Jun 23, 2019 10:48:40 GMT
Is there an interesting parallel with Trump-supporting Kelsey Grammer at the ENO : could un/conscious sentiment be part of the negativity .. /rhetorical I'm sorry but thinking that Kelsey Grammer got bad reviews for Man of La Mancha at the ENO because he is a Republican is classic right-wing self-pity. The Telegraph gave it two stars because they thought it was a bad show. No need to apologise. Have a look at that thread long before it got to reviews. |
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Post by NeilVHughes on Jun 23, 2019 11:15:02 GMT
Still thinking about the audience reaction from yesterday.
Malkovich’s character is a caricature and watching it you cannot believe he would get away with the ‘wooing’ as portrayed and you watch his world fall apart and get a false impression that only an idiot would be taken in and ‘we’ would not be taken in if ever in that position.
What is missing is that the ploy has worked hundreds of times previously and these women were not idiots, given a choice between losing your dreams/livelihood and facilitating a monster how would you really react in that position.
Personally knew very little of the writers politics and had no impact on my view of the play, it is just a poor one-dimensional shallow depiction of a serial abuser where we are only shown the one time it failed, maybe if the first act was a ‘successful’ historical depiction and the second act what we see, giving us a true indication that most times these monsters succeed, people are intrinsically insecure and we naturally defer to powerful people who are able propagate the myth by using our own complicitness.
Today’s framing of Domestic Abuse being a left wing wishy washy principle is a further demonstration of this myth being propagated whilst a blatant misogynist continues to blind us with the evidence being in plain sight.
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Post by vdcni on Jun 23, 2019 11:22:04 GMT
I'm sorry but thinking that Kelsey Grammer got bad reviews for Man of La Mancha at the ENO because he is a Republican is classic right-wing self-pity. The Telegraph gave it two stars because they thought it was a bad show. No need to apologise. Have a look at that thread long before it got to reviews. Where his politics were mentioned in passing but by far the biggest concern was whether he was capable of singing the score. Kind of important for a musical don't you think |
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Post by londonpostie on Jun 23, 2019 11:39:43 GMT
Urgh.
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Post by Rory on Jun 23, 2019 13:23:15 GMT
5* from the Mail on Sunday.
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Post by sfsusan on Jun 23, 2019 15:37:24 GMT
I didn't know anything about his politics and still thought it was mediocre. Especially compared to his earlier works. (Although that does explain all the cracks about liberals and Democrats.)
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Post by Phantom of London on Jun 23, 2019 17:49:01 GMT
5* from the Mail on Sunday. I know, Colour surprised by this, when I saw it in mother’s Mail on Sunday supplement. |
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Post by cfbrrr on Jun 24, 2019 10:46:11 GMT
It’s almost irrelevant to compare critical reactions to the Republican conservatism of Kelsey Grammer with those aimed at David Mamet. Grammer, like a few other — a very few other — conservative actors in the US, is a mild-mannered guy who, for a living, gamely recites (or sings!) not his own words but those penned by others, and who thereby gets a certain pass from the profession’s overwhelmingly leftist critical/political class looking to pounce, denounce, and discredit whenever they can sniff out an ideological entrée.
David Mamet, on the other hand, even more than through his play and movie scripts, loudly projects his views via the bullhorn of public discourse, having “come out” in 2008 with a high-visibility article entitled “Why I Am No Longer a Brain-Dead Liberal.” His 2011 “The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture” is a fierce diatribe at what he considers the virulent excesses of the American left, including those of the compliant media. His somewhat earlier “True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor” skewers the sacred cow of method acting and its psychobabblic approach, as well as those persons within the profession, academics and commentators among them, who in his eyes have seriously derailed the theatrical process. Mamet’s views on these subjects are well-known throughout the industry.
Anyone who thinks that someone such as David Mamet — a person who not only strays from the dogmatic party-line but excoriates it as well — doesn’t pay severely, directly or otherwise, for these recent-career transgressions either is naive or has precious little knowledge of 1) the extreme bifurcation informing today’s political and cultural divide, especially in the US, or of 2) who exactly it is that determines and calls the shots that matter and what their political slant far-more-than-preponderantly is. And let’s surely include within this vortex the controlling, monospeak influence of Silicon Valley — in addition, of course, to that which had been exclusively regarded as the media.
Irrespective of whether Mr. Mamet’s most current play is any good or not, it will necessarily receive a critical drubbing — and a gleeful, sadistic one at that — unless, perhaps, he were to recant his apostasies.
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Post by vdcni on Jun 24, 2019 11:24:37 GMT
And again his latest play despite him not having a decent hit for quite a while has gotten a major West End production with a big name actor. I don't see what severe price he's paying.
The reviews were terrible but those bad reviews also included the Telegraph which is about as right wing as you get in this countries media.
Maybe this is more true in the US but then the US is currently being 'governed' by the administration he supports who are locking up children in cages so in the grand scheme of things a few liberals being mean to David Mamet is not something I am going to worry about too much.
And a friendly suggestion before you start going on and on about politics maybe a few more posts about the theatre might be in order. That's why we're here after all.
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Post by zahidf on Jun 24, 2019 12:18:02 GMT
5* from the Mail on Sunday. Quentin letts seems to be the audience for this play... |
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Post by Rory on Jun 24, 2019 12:38:50 GMT
5* from the Mail on Sunday. Quentin letts seems to be the audience for this play... Good old Quentin has shuffled over to the Sunday Times. This was Robert Gore Langton. |
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Post by lonlad on Jun 24, 2019 13:25:32 GMT
Quentin loved it as well - 4 stars from him.
This comment tho' is total codswollop: .... it will necessarily receive a critical drubbing — and a gleeful, sadistic one at that
No one is LOOKING to bury Mamet's recent plays; they, alas, do that all too easily themselves. Sad but true.
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Post by londonpostie on Jun 24, 2019 18:23:08 GMT
Maybe this is more true in the US but then the US is currently being 'governed' by the administration he supports who are locking up children in cages so in the grand scheme of things a few liberals being mean to David Mamet is not something I am going to worry about too much. And a friendly suggestion before you start going on and on about politics maybe a few more posts about the theatre might be in order. That's why we're here after all. Indeed, heaven forbid we "go on and on" - 4 paragraphs later ...
Well anyway, thank you for the 'friendly suggestion' without which goodness knows where we'd be in relation to political context, political creatives and their overt political work: we're here for theatre, which knows no politic context after all.
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Post by vdcni on Jun 24, 2019 19:03:32 GMT
Well the friendly suggestion wasn't to you and the OP didn't talk about the political context of the play, or the play at all, just how Mamet's personal politics might have affected his reputation and the plays critical reception.
Feel free to discuss the politics of the play but that wasn't the case here.
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Post by londonpostie on Jun 24, 2019 19:32:50 GMT
Thank you for the freedom to discuss politics - but where did you get the idea I wanted to discuss the politics of the play? I posed a rhetorical question about audiences. Mamet seemingly has no choice other than to discuss politics in his work, it's in his blood.
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Post by vdcni on Jun 24, 2019 19:42:31 GMT
Do what you like. As I said my friendly suggestion wasn't directed at you so why you responded I don't know.
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Post by missthelma on Jun 25, 2019 11:45:47 GMT
I had absolutely no idea David Mamet had turned into a right wing nut job, a lonely place in the entertainment field as it's mostly left wing nut jobs. Still he can always have tea and a slice of Victoria Sponge with Jon Voight and James Woods.
I have to be honest and say I think his plays are vastly over rated, in my humble he's written a couple of half way good ones and the rest are fairly dire. Considering the big names they attract, I am clearly wrong and in a minority. In contrast I think a lot of his film work is superb, House of Games, Spanish Prisoner, Wag The Dog etc. Go figure.
I wouldn't be bothering with this one were it not for John Malkovich and had I seen him on stage previously I would be swerving Bitter Wheat. Especially given his odd performances in some recent films/tv (Billions being a prime example).
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Post by missthelma on Jul 4, 2019 9:45:45 GMT
So, this is comfortably one of the worst things I have ever had the honour to sit through. Definitely Top 3, kept off the top by Steven Berkoff’s Salome which would be difficult to surpass let’s be honest.
There’s so much wrong it’s difficult to know where to start. This collection of words (to call it a play is too generous) is utterly incoherent. There is no sense to be made from it, ideas, people, what you think are plot points crop up and then vanish never to be seen again and in some cases never even to have any reference made to them again. It opens cold into what appears to be the middle of a scene between the Malkovich character and an unnamed writer, this puts you slightly off kilter as you have no investment in these people or what’s happening. After about 10 minutes this writer disappears and is next seen at curtain call, nothing in that scene has any bearing on the rest of the performance or is really referred to again. I would say three possibly four other people on the stage suffer a similar fate; there’s no real reason for them to be there.
Doon Mackichan is on the stage as what I assume is an executive assistant. There is no character, she is an empty vessel, a phantom, she could be played male, female, old, young, black, white, by an alpaca, and it truly would not matter. The only function of the part about which we learn nothing is to feed lines, quite frankly an ironing board with post it notes on would have been as effective. Not to critique the actress as what is she supposed to do? She is at a banquet of crumbs.
The only other person on stage is Ionna Kimbrook who has slightly more to work with but not much as her part is just there to allow lots of bad ethnic jokes/assumptions about her to tumble from the mouth of our ‘hero’. She has limited agency or what she has happens off stage.
It has crossed my mind that this might have worked better as a monologue given the short shrift offered most of the actors but ‘Barney Fein’ is poorly drawn himself and there is no root or core to the character that allows you a way in to feel sympathy, empathy or even a kernel of understanding. The laziness inherent in the writing can be seen from the name alone, I mean come on, make some effort. Barney seems to forget things, names, what’s just been said, why? What is this supposed to clue us in about the character, illegal drugs and alcohol play no part. Is he losing his mind? A powerful executive does not do that or wouldn’t be powerful for long.
There are lots of barbs towards liberals and Hollywood movies but they’re not new or especially clever. I smiled once in the whole two hours. There was one chap a bit further forward in the stalls that had clearly been at the giggle juice and was guffawing repeatedly. Perhaps he doesn’t get out much.
Malkovich, so John Malkovich. Well he wears fat suit for some inexplicable reason, which is not referred to for the first 50 minutes and then gets hammered into the ground repeatedly for the rest of the evening as though that suddenly explains everything. Sadly it’s not a big enough fat suit to actually make you realise it could be a problem (or not from the back of the stalls anyway). Was that actor’s vanity or just practicalities? It just goes on to the lengthening list of WTF? There is no modulation to the performance, every line is said with the trademark Malkovich mannered indifference, and there is no menace, humour, all just matter of fact. Bizarrely a couple of times he starts to flail his arms about like he’s attempting to power the national grid for a bit. As with everything else, it makes no sense. It’s like watching a silent movie actor over emphasising gestures.
As we were leaving, some of us agreed on the stairs that it was one of the worst things we’d ever seen, and bemoaning the talent behind it and how far they’d fallen not a representative sample obviously but kind of interesting. I overheard two people on the way to the tube, one saying to the other ‘I do like my plays to have some story’ which probably best encapsulates the evening
And message to the Garrick staff, SIT STILL during the performance, don’t send messages that go ‘boop’ on your phone at the back and for the love of all that’s holy put some WD-40 on that door at the back that you were constantly in and out of, It virtually had more lines than some of the characters the amount you used it.
Another point, the security staff seemed to be confiscating food. Is that even allowed?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 4, 2019 10:22:35 GMT
So, this is comfortably one of the worst things I have ever had the honour to sit through. Definitely Top 3, kept off the top by Steven Berkoff’s Salome which would be difficult to surpass let’s be honest. Did you see Steven Berkoff's Weinstein play? Sounds like the perfect night out for you  www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/feb/13/harvey-review-steven-berkoff-harvey-weinstein-playground-theatre-londonYes, but I think there has to be a sign saying that's the policy (as there is for instance at the ENO). Very annoying practice though, although obviously people eating sushi or burgers or whatever in a theatre is also annoying! |
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Post by theplayer on Jul 4, 2019 19:42:00 GMT
I was at today's matinee. Tonally, this was strange. The seriousness of the subject was played For laughs too much. The performance of John Malkovich was great.
The subplot about the Syrian terrorist was bizarre.
Always happy to see her new play in the West End (such a rarity these days!) but I have mixed feelings about this one.
Having said that, Malkovich's performance may be worth the price of the ticket alone.
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