Word: teach
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...subjective criterion, to give some insight into the performance of Third World students. Here also the Third World is shortchanged. The teacher cannot possibly give a good and informative recommendation for a student when he barely knows the students. This is inevitable when the teacher is trying to effectively teach 50 or more students. In addition to this, the typical situation is that many teachers do not sympathize with, understand, or have confidence in the aspirations of their Third World students--largely because most of those teachers are white...
Paul Guilfoyle's Teach provides the moving force in the play. Both Donny and Bobby (jitteringly played by Lloyd Brass) are deferential to Teach, a self-assured, macho punk and Donny's old buddy. Guilfoyle brings an excellent manic intensity to his part. His mannerisms, a shambling set of neverending words and motions, are largely reminiscent of Robert De Niro in Mean Streets. Teach, a grown-up yet immature punk, follows De Niro's Johnny Boy, save that Guilfoyle lacks De Niro's genius, and his Teach is self-consciously smart, whereas Johnny Boy is too dumb to know...
What little action there is concerns Donny's attempt, masterminded by Teach, to steal a valuable buffalo-head nickel he sold to a customer several days before, unaware of the coin's worth. Teach plans the crime, infecting Donny with his enthusiasm and such telling logic as "You make your own right and wrong...so you know what I'm talking about here, huh?" Finally, Teach and Donny plan the caper, and Bobby is replaced by an absent friend named Fletch, at Teach's insistence...
...ends the first act, with the audience expecting some kind of real action, at last, in the second act. The tensions are there--the plotted crime, as well as growing differences between Teach and Donny, mostly concerning Bobby, but also inspired by Teach's self-assured abrasiveness. But nothing really happens until the end of the second act. Instead, Mamet gives us his version of Becket, perhaps entitled "En Attendant Fletcher." The act limps by as the characters wait for the arrival of their accomplice, and the tensions between them continue to build. Mamet, it seems, wanted to show...
...tensions between the men build as time passes. When Teach brandishes a revolver, the audience feels he must surely use it, but this is a bit of deceptive foreshadowing. Instead, Teach goes berserk, provoked by Bobby's apparent lies. He brains the poor kid with a lamp and then proceeds to trash the set in a fine display of uncontrolled rage. This moment of Brando-esque pique is genuinely frightening, but somewhat inexplicable. Just as suddenly as he began, Teach stops, becoming apologetic. With all his bravado dissipated, he becomes pitiful...but why? The motivations remain cloudy...