SOURCE: Kanfer, Stefan. “Diverting Sorrows.” New Leader 80, no. 19 (29 December 1997): 35.

In the following review, Kanfer provides a negative judgment of the three plays in The Old Neighborhood.

David Mamet has made a considerable reputation out of staccato and scatology. When his characters are not strafing each other with threats, they saturate the air with the language of the barracks and the gutter. Often this has the effect of candid, vigorous expression—capturing the way people actually talk under pressure. Such was the case in full-length works like Speed the Plow and Glengarry Glen Ross. It is not the case in his latest effort.

For one thing, The Old Neighborhood is not really a play. The intermissionless show at the Booth Theater amounts to three autobiographical one-acters centered on the middle-aged Bobby (Peter Riegert) as he makes a sentimental journey to his past. In the first, The Disappearance of the...