November

by David Mamet
Directed by Moe Mantello
Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York
Opened  January 17, 2008
Starring Nathan Lane, Laurie Metcalf, Dylan Baker
http://www.novembertheplay.com/

Politics on Broadway

“November” is simply the funniest show to hit Broadway in years. Nathan Lane can set off laughter with a twitch of his eyebrow. It’s quite remarkable. The plot, a slender one, has Lane, the incumbent U.S. President, one Charles Smith, coming up soon for re-election. He expects to lose; his lieutenant expects him to lose; he has been losing his popular support ever since taking office. More or less. But Smith seems so harmless and ineffectual, he is as much a victim of political machinery as a wet wick doomed to melt.

David Mamet is not the writer who leaps to mind as a master of laugh-out-loud comedy. Still, “November” calls for a reassessment of his gifts. Simplicity is one. Almost all of the play happens in a back room of the White House, implicitly the place where truth will out. President Smith and his first lieutenant field phone calls, assistants with urgent messages, news of assorted dignitaries, and most of all, of a guy committed to making a two hundred million dollar contribution to Smith’s campaign. The hitch is he’s a turkey farmer who thinks his animals should touch the president’s hand as a sort of charm in a gesture of good will, or secular blessing for his non-human supporters.

A goodly number of gag lines come out of this situation, which escalates in Act Two when the farmer faces his big, annual sale of the birds for Thanksgiving feasts. In the play’s view, the poor things are hapless victims of the holiday. So Smith decides Thanksgiving is “wrong:” He gets his speech writers on it. His bigger decision comes as a result of discovering how feeble his power as President is in fact. At one point, spin masters around him urge him to marry a lesbian on television to drive up his dismal popularity ratings and provide writers with a great occasion for a speech. Eventually, misunderstandings and mistakes, those twin keys to comedy, lead him to assert himself: he’ll win this election and outfox them all.

Lane is simply hilarious on missing commonsensical meanings. His well known pose with one raised eyebrow brings down the house before he utters a word. Not to undermine the effect of those words: dialogue never hits a false note. Pacing, perhaps the critical ingredient of making comedy, never falters. On that score, director Joe Mantello exceeds his own considerable reputation as the winner of awards by the Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel, Helen Hayes and just about every first ranking theater group known. Put it plainly: everyone concerned with the production from writer to copy-boy contributed to its excellence. Praise is gratuitous.

Nina DaVinci