The Duck Variations and Sexual Perversity in Chicago
Iconic playwright David Mamet has practically been unavoidable in Boston this season, with the American Repertory Theatre just having finished their production of "Romance" and the Lyric Stage having produced his more recent work "November" last fall.
Now the A.R.T. reaches into the Mamet way-back machine and pulls out a pair of one acts - The Duck Variations and Sexual Perversity in Chicago.
While both were among Mamet’s earliest works, written in the early 1970’s, each bears the indelible Mamet stamp of rat-a-tat dialogue, but they’re at the opposite ends of the spectrum of Mamet’s cynicism.
First on the double bill (pun intended) is "The Duck Variations", a sweet little amuse bouche of a play, where two old men sit on a park bench discussing ducks, life, death, and friendship.
Well, mostly ducks. Rather than the profanity-punctuated sentences of classics like "Glengarry Glen Ross", "The Duck Variations" is peppered with conversational clichés and humorous non sequiturs, like this recitation of the woes of being a wild duck, "A duck is at the mercy of...sunspot...small, vicious children...chain stores..."
The worst epithet you’ll hear in this play is "a crying, piss-laden shame".
Still, the rhythmic yet realistic nature of Mamet’s dialogue is strong form here, with theater vets Thomas Derrah and Will LeBow perfectly in sync with each other, each scripted stammer, "Yes" or "Well" in its precise place.
Derrah and LeBow are a study in efficiency, with their blocking confined to a tiny bench and only props a bag of breadcrumbs and a well-used handkerchief, each glance or sniff speaks volumes.
They’re also funny as hell, wringing the maximum laughs out of the script. In under an hour and with no real plot, Derrah and LeBow fully create fully realized characters that are as touching and human as any on stage.
The second half of the evening, "Sexual Perversity in Chicago" is a contrast in every way possible. Four students from the A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theater Training play the roles of the twenty-something characters, each with varying degrees of success.
Instead of being blissfully stuck on a park bench, the action ranges all around the cabaret style seating area, a fun effect but one that leads to a lot of chair-scraping and to some scenes at the bar that could have used a microphone.
Where "The Duck Variations" had evergreen characters and could have been written yesterday, "Sexual Perversity" seems firmly set in the swinging 1970’s, with one of its character’s tales of sexual conquest, although the inability of men and women to communicate is still relevant.
"Sexual Perversity" traces the too-short romance of Dan and Deborah, played by the nicely fresh-faced Scott Lyman and Susannah Hoffman, instantly in love and quickly moving in together, but threatened by their own insecurities and their friends.
Randy Bernard (Tim Eliot) and brittle Joan (Laura Parker) do everything they can to plant the seeds of doubt in Dan and Deborah’s minds, sometimes subtly but most directly. As Joan puts it when Deborah announces she’s moving in with Dan, "I give you two months."
There’s as much comic as cynicism in "Sexual Perversity", and the actors do deliver the laughs. Parker’s straightforward storytelling to Joan’s grade school class of a fairy tale that features a hag is a hoot, while Eliot gets most of the laughs with Bernard’s sex tales (to be fair, the character of Bernard is destined to get most of the laughs as he has most of the lines).
The cast still has a little maturing to do, appropriate for theater students, and will benefit from their performance run to settle into Mamet’s dialogue.
They spit it all out in the right rhythms, but haven’t yet gotten to the point where they always successfully sell those rhythms as sounding natural (just watch Derrah and LeBow and you’ll learn).
Also, some odd choices are being made, either by the actors or by student director Paul Stacey, such as the eternally surprised look on Parker’s face no matter what Joan’s mood or circumstance. However, Stacey and his cast put on an otherwise energetic and fun production.
Presented by the American Repertory Company at the Zero Arrow Street Theater in Cambridge, through June 28, 2009
