[A Life in the Theatre is Mamet's] least characteristic play. Ordinarily he works from an oblique angle of vision, in flat tones. Life is all surface flamboyance, sight gags and gimmickry, lush language and posturing—in short, closer to a Feydeau farce than to the Beckett-like minimalism to which Mamet more typically aspires…. At its best, Life is a mildly amusing diversion; at its more frequent worst, it is a tedious, offensively banal caricature of what daily life in the theater is actually like.
The sheer awkwardness of the play surprised me, since Mamet is the most technically proficient of the new writers. In The Water Engine he manages skillfully to juxtapose a 1930s radio play about an idealistic young inventor pursued by the evil forces of corporate greed with the inane chatter of a "Century of Progress" tour guide—and, in addition, intercuts ominous injunctions from a chain letter, which the actors take turns in reading out. Where the transitions in Life are amateurishly abrupt or nonexistent, in The Water Engine Mamet … interweaves his triangulated tale with such dexterity that we're absorbed into the intricate shifts of time, place, and mood. Initially, that is. Once we catch on to the alternations in rhythm, the play's fascination rapidly evaporates…. Eventually anger takes over instead—that so much is being put at the service of so little. Mamet has subtitled the play An American Fable. Well, yes—if you believe our culture (like our theater) is best seen as an allegory of emptiness.
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