Word: mamet
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...putting to hear Mamet's characteristic cadences used in a domestic drama. To watch a little boy engage in relentlessly stylized repartee with the initially distracting Ed Begly Jr. is surreal indeed...
Much of the first scene, in which the characters mostly sit around and talk about the child's refusal to sleep, seems almost a parody of Mamet's trademark style, and the audience cannot resist laughing watching the adults and the child struggle awkwardly to keep afloat in the ceaseless torrent of words...
...play progresses, the actors are able to get a better hold on the rhythms of the dialogue. The words rocket form person to person as the characters desperately struggle to be heard and to fend off silence. Mamet's dialogue is like a spell, when it works right One is hypnotized, and can't help but hear what he wants emphasized. The characters babble on in a Beckett-like fashion about whatever comes to mind--an old photograph, a torn blanket, an impending camping trip with John and his absent father. As they ramble along, certain phrases stick...
...fatalistic inability of the characters to understand or to control the events of their lives is expressed in these words--they pop out of the dialogue and steer one towards understanding, even when the sum of the conversation is obtuse. Through these moments of clarity, Mamet offers us clues to 'the cryptogram...
With "the cryptogram" Mamet is presenting his audience with a new kind of puzzle. While the play lacks the compelling intensity of his earlier works such as "Glengary, Glenross" or the amazing "Oleanna," the intellectual challenge of sifting through the dialogue to try to hear what Mamet has to say is exciting. The actors, after some initial stumbling, carry off the piece with energy and subtlety. Presumably, since Mamet is directing, they are fulfilling whatever vision he had for the piece...