Two nights with Mamet and other nights

There are only very few things in life that will be satisfying two nights in a row…Mamet would have been one of those if only there weren’t so many similarities between Oleanna which I saw on Thursday and Speed the Plow which I saw last night…

In both plays, the only female character said ‘I don’t understand’ several times, delivered in almost the same voice, the same tone. One could follow the line of argument Carol in Oleanna does and say Mamet is deliberately making his female characters seemingly naïve but in truth manipulating.

Both plays develop at the same speed through their three acts as I illustrate below. In both plays, characters are annoyed or saved by the phone – that is perhaps to give those on stage a little breather from the verbal cross-fire Mamet makes them engage in…actors become fast talking loose cannons - they were looser in the Plow, a little more cautious in Oleanna…I don’t know about the plays enough to know if it was the acting or the script.

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Act 1 in both plays is relatively quiet where we learn about the characters, their past, their expectations of future, what they do and don’t understand. This is where observations about society are made – in particular the society of the 1980s when both plays were written, but some things never change. Observations are of course mostly about what’s wrong in the society.

In Oleanna, there is a long exchange about the role of education – ‘our
predilection for education is prejudiced’ the Professor says. We don’t all have
to be educated. Education is a waste of time when it’s just about memorising and
retaining information. It should be about questioning information, knowledge,
positions, power and power games. My father argued the same when he took my two
brothers out of school aged 12 and 15. He didn’t want them to grow up fitting
the same mould as everyone else. Perhaps he was right but I wish my brothers
could have made the choice themselves – perhaps that’s impossible…but isn’t
there always a mould we fit in even if it’s ‘no mould’?

In the Plow, it’s about the choice between earning money and standing for ideas
when commissioning a film – the option where standing for ideas earns money is
not discussed (does it happen?). The two film producers call each other
whores…well yes, one doesn’t have to sell one’s body to be a whore, anything
personal and sacred would do, like your honour…but sometimes whores have the
highest honour…in a way it turns that way in the Plow too.

The second acts are where things change.

In Oleanna, Carol, the young student starts to grow up but can’t do it alone…in
every other sentence she refers to ‘her group’. She puts a different meaning
to things the professor said in Act 1 – for example his recounting of a
silly saying he heard years ago (the rich make love less often than the
poor, but when they do, they take more of their clothes off) is interpreted
as him engaging in verbal pornography.

In the Plow, there is Karen the temporary secretary who falls in love with the ideas in a book – we are all scared, we are all lonely, we are all after love. Why can’t we make a film about this? That’s what people want…share their loneliness and fears through film. Is realising this the moment your life takes a turn for the better?

All masks are dropped in Act 3 and what’s revealed underneath is not pretty. Anger, frustration, disappointment lead to violence… I won’t give any more away…

There were some very interesting ideas in both plays – some of which have now, 20 years on, become truisms. Perhaps most interestingly, both plays made me wonder what I would have thought about them had I watched them at the time they were written and I was a teenager…

Would I have sided with Carol – same sex, same age, same position in life…did I
think then that a man should not patronise his wife by calling her ‘babe’?
Probably – at least until I realised it was OK so long as everyone can be called
‘babe’.

Would I have fallen in love with the book like Karen –
even if I didn’t quite (or at all) understood it? Or do I now sell a little bit
of myself when I want to get something done?

Which side was, am, will I be – with the goodies or the baddies – cause we
always want to belong to a camp?

Who is good, who is bad and when? That’s the crucial question really isn’t it? When?

We are all good and bad but when we make the choice to be what, how widely known and when known how widely approved our choice is, is what labels us as a good or a bad person…

A play that touches upon this, a play that leaves the audience wondering which character’s choice to support and applaud is a good play.

So perhaps two nights with Mamet were two good nights…

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There were about 10 members of audience in Pentameter Theatre for Oleanna, while the Old Vic was full for the latter…A couple of young actors in the former – one J who was in Faustus I wrote about last May, and Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum in the latter. I think Oleanna deserved more audience and Speed the Plow deserved less enthusiasm from whoever turned up. But I guess that’s fame for you.

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I went to see the Plow with a Turkish friend, M. I thought he’d appreciate it given that he is going back to Turkey to study theatre directing and has been an actor and musician for 10 years. He didn’t know who Kevin Spacey is…

I am not KS’s biggest fan but he is in three of my most favourite films: The Usual Suspects, LA Confidential and American Beauty. When I saw the former with the then boyfriend back in 1997, we’d spent 4 hours talking about the film afterwards – nothing to do with being younger and excitable but all to do with having grey cells in common…and that’s during the then yet unspoken end of our five-year relationship. Now, 11 years later I finally can answer the question how we managed to have such a long relationship. And I need someone like that, not someone who doesn’t know KS, any of these three films but just discovered Rowan Atkinson’s comic genius – as Mr Bean mind you…

I knew this evening, in one way or another, would be the end of the episode with M – at least it’s been a happy episode.

KS is excellent by the way…he was a little over the top at the start I thought – though that could be the cocaine habit of his character – but I Act 3 he was fantastic and all through both KS and JG had excellent energy which never once dropped…that energy is what’s hardest to achieve as an actor I think.

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Two nights with Mamet were definitely better than the one night I spent Slow Dating earlier in March…You know about speed dating which is 3 minutes long, this is 4 minutes long. I had had enough of this kind of artificial introductions but I thought such a simple yet clever marketing ploy deserved rewarding and took up a friend’s invitation.

I wore a nice dress with a little cleavage, made myself up, nice hairdo (loving my new hair cut), met with three other friends (one, a man) to have a drink beforehand. All went well for about the first half…Then my round of misfortune struck…

Unfortunate man no. 1 looked at my name tag and said ‘that’s gotto be a joke’. I
may have laughed had it been delivered in a friendly manner.

Unfortunate man no. 2 (immediately after no 1) said ‘oh so you are from Turkey and you drink alcohol, you must be very liberal!’.

Unfortunate man no. 3 (immediately after no 2) was more civilised, very polite but also a little distant which I thought normal since he’d learned I was from Turkey and he is a Greek Cypriot. And I was relieved to see that two people from societies which are supposed to be notorious enemies can be civilised. What he didn’t realise was that the girl sitting at the next table was a friend of mine and she would recount to me how as soon as he sat at her table he would shrug his shoulders and twist his face in disgust and say ‘the girl in the previous table was from Turkey’…

Unfortunate man no. 4 (yes, immediately after no 3) asked permission to go to the toilet when it was his turn at my table and came back stinking of cigarette smoke…

I was very upset at the end of the night…for all the work of integration I’d done and the comfort I’d felt as a result over the years were for nothing. With people like these who are likely to be majority here I will never be integrated. I was just fooling myself and living in a little world I’d set up for myself surrounded by just friends. Then, a Turkish friend, M, consoled me the next day saying I would not be integrated with racists and fascists and boring, ‘too straight’ men even back in Turkey, and even there I would be in my little own world. An English friend, G, said the other day he had not realised how much prejudice I had faced. I laughed, I had not realised either.

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Have you heard the radio ad by Anti-Terrorist Hot Line? I just have and am appalled. Some vulnerable and sexy voiced woman asks

‘How do you know if someone just videoing somewhere for fun or as surveillance for a terrorist attack?

‘How do you know if someone is just buying something in bulk or buying to make a bomb?’

And one more question I can’t remember now…a trustworthy male voice says you don’t have to know…if you suspect call the confidential anti-terrorist hotline and we’ll investigate for you…My God…what better way to set off mass paranoia? Who are most people likely to suspect - Muslim looking, darker skinned men and women? I am disgusted!

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Just finished typing this, am going to read through it with a glass of red…why not, it’s Easter weekend, it’s a respectable 3 pm in the afternoon…and it’s snowing one minute and sunny the next…and to be honest I can’t think of anything better to do…hoovering perhaps…OK where is that half-drunk bottle from last week….

…At the bottom of the glass and this text and feeling awfully sleepy now…