Word: mamet
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David Ives's All in the Timing is a fast-paced comic slap in the face. Ives's collection of highly original skits--on topics as assorted as the death of Leon Trotsky and the plays of David Mamet--makes one realize just how predictable and sappy most modern comedy is. Even when writing about a commonplace subject like a couple's first meeting in a cafe, Ives maintains a hilarious, cleverly crafted style, free of cliches. Happily, first-time directors Jeremy McCarter '98, who is a Crimson editor, and Adam Stein '99 brought Ives's hilarity to life last...
Steering the night's entertainment into the realm of parody, "Speed-the-Play" skewers the theater of David Mamet. This skit contains miniature versions of four Mamet plays: "American Buffalo," "Speed-the-Plow," "Sexual Perversity in Chicago" and "Glengarry Glen Ross...
...jovial team of actors runs through the plays at a frantic pace, boiling Mamet's scenes down to a few strategic lines. The actors' own smiles were evident even when they were supposed to be portraying Mamet's rage and angst. As a result, at least one joke--the excessive use of expletives in Mamet's plays--lost its bite. Nonetheless, "Speed-the-Play," as written, works as a mordantly funny critique of over-the-top postmodern theater...
...Randy Newman's Faust. The Lord (Ken Page) and the devil (David Garrison) face off once again, this time singing Newman's wonderfully tuneful score. In its second stage incarnation, at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, the musical still has book problems (despite help from David Mamet), and could use some Broadway-class choreography, but it's great...
...Written (HarperSanFrancisco), his collection of essays by writers and poets, he contends that contemporary authors are better qualified than Bible experts to explicate what he sees primarily as a secular masterpiece. Indeed, both Phillip Lopate's disconcerting contribution about playing Abraham in an Abraham-Sarah-Pharaoh triangle and David Mamet's Freudian riff on the Flood make for enjoyable reading. But Rosenberg's thesis is sorely tested by The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis (Image), a wonderful book by Living Conversation participant and Orthodox Midrash expert Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg. Her chapter on the Flood beats Mamet's hands down...