Product Description
David Mamet's new Oval Office satire depicts one day in the life of a beleaguered American commander-in-chief.

It's November in a Presidential election year, and incumbent Charles Smith's chances for reelection are looking grim. Approval ratings are down, his money's running out, and nuclear war might be imminent. Though his staff has thrown in the towel and his wife has begun to prepare for her post-White House life, Chuck isn't ready to give up just yet. Amidst the biggest fight of his political career, the President has to find time to pardon a couple of turkeys — saving them from the slaughter before Thanksgiving — and this simple PR event inspires Smith to risk it all in attempt to win back public support. With Mamet's characteristic no-holds-barred style, November is a scathingly hilarious take on the state of America today and the lengths to which people will go to win.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 3 reviews)

A Turkey with Dressing

Mamet is wonderful. At his best, he is the best. "Novemeber" falls short of Mamet's greatest achievements. The author has always been funny; he is one of the funniest American dramatists around. These days he has been doing satire. He has the gift of dialog but I feel his inability to bring an idea to fruition leaves his recent work strangely incomplete. The patter is brilliant. This is, after all, "American Buffalo" in the Oval Office. This is Mamet's world. That he sees the American president as just another two-bit hustler is Mamet's key insight. I'm not sure he has another. This comic set-up more or less holds the play together. It works but it grows tiresome. At curtain one feels let down. For one thing, I am not sure that Mamet has fully developed his satire. He's got the patter down cold. One wants to hear more as one always wants to hear more Mamet. I fear, however, that one waits for the pay-off in vain. One problem is that his plotting around the President's decision not to pardon the nation's symbolic turkey unless he is paid a substantial amount of money is not enough to sustain a three-act play. The subplot of the blackmailing speech writer is a possible strong move, but I think Mamet got bored with the subject half-way through. Mamet does a great deal to make the thing sound with-it but in the end the play is bland. It is not relentless enough, crazy enough, not even angry enough. Mamet is coming close to losing his ability to create believable stories. Young Mamet believed in good and evil; now, there's a conflict! Nowadays, Mamet has convinced himself that we are all corrupt. He is probably right, but this insight creates a duller humor.
September 02, 2008

"Throwing ONESELF Under The Bus"

In "November," playwright David Mamet turns his attention from the petty hustlers of the business world and those in the academy to a mordant examination of a more prominent - and presumably more dangerous - character type, the "imperial" President of the United States.

Although "November" offers a broadly farcical portrait of an overparted -or better yet - shockingly incompetent leader of the nation, the Never-Never-Land of Nixon's Watergate, Clinton's infamous pardons, and Bush's small CEO - loyalty - style "leadership" make Mamet's approach seem less exaggerated than close to reportage. Any more "realistic" a treatment, I suspect, would have defied the pen even of a Jonathan Swift.

The theme of the play is that the personal has become the political - in the worst way. The "common good," for instance, has now been redefined as whatever actions will insure a scoundrel's re-election. The office of President has become an unapologetic road to self-aggrandisement, presumably an extension of American business as it's practiced by the shameless, deal-making Me-Firsters who are the staple of earlier Mamet plays. The play's richest irony, though, is its revelation that the Presidency is -when push comes to shove - too limited an area for the full exercise of a scoundrel's talents, as the opportunities for crookedness, because of the inbuilt checks and balances in American governance, are 'sadly' narrower than those open to the enterprising CEOs of many a major corporation.

Mamet has been taken to task for the repetitive and ultimately painful use of the "F" word by his central character, Charles, the beleagured President. I'd argue however that the fault is the character's, not the author's. Though Charles' speech is undeniably ugly, the vulgar language suits his low, all too human nature. He is, after all, yet another clown dressed up in presidential red, white, and blue. His intense ego needs for power and control, while his presidency wanes, suffer frustration; his repeated use of the "F" word emphasizes his increasingly narrow means of satisfaction.

The flaw in this work, as I see it, is the employment of too small a cast of characters to create the larger canvas the material cries out for. Mamet has produced a cameo rather than a full-scale play. Most of the scenes are given over to monologues involving Charles on the telephone or to dialogues involving 2 characters in repetitive situations. The small scale treatment is not an imitation of Broadway practices in the 20's or 30's, as has been suggested. A glance at the dramatis personae of anything from those years, say, by O'Neill or Kauffman and Hart will reveal immense casts. The proximate cause of such reduction is more likely the current economics of New York theater which mandates such cost saving if one is to be produced at all. The consequence is that Mamet's intended satire on our "imperial" Presidents lacks both a suitable variety of character encounters and an in depth probing of the sort required for fully realized dramatic clarity and emphasis. Though stretched out over three acts, "November" is finally little more than a sketch, a clever stage "exercise" at best.
July 31, 2008

Mamet Doing Some Bottom Fishing

On Sunday, January 13, 2008, I saw the Broadway production of "November" with Nathan Lane. He was very funny in the role of a wisecracking President about to lose an election. The play was hilarious, but it was a slight Mamet effort, marred, I think, by the extreme overuse of a four letter expletive in all of its forms. After a while I saw the audience cringing at the use of the word, not because they were prudes but because its repetitive use became boring, annoying, grating, abrasive. One of our leading playwrights surely could have used his wide vocabulary to put in some other words. The play is a farce, a satire, a gag festival, but it is not great. Without Nathan Lane I believe it would have soon perished. As of this date it has twenty more performances to run.
The script does not read particularly well, and had I not seen it, I think I would like it even less. I haven't seen a recent play in which so much time is spent in telephone conversations with unseen, unheard "characters." It was an old convention of Broadway comedies that happily disappeared. "Get me Joe on the phone" etc, etc. The structure of the play is out of the nineteen twenties and thirties comedy cliché genre, and let's hope it's not resurrected too often.
Any excuse is made for a gag, a laugh line. Elements of the plot: The President is supposed to pardon the Thanksgiving turkey, President Charles Smith will do anything to garner money for his campaign, his presidential library and himself, his lesbian speechwriter has returned from China with her partner after adopting a baby, an Indian tribe wants a casino on Martha's Vineyard, bird flu may have been brought back from China, the President has a team of secret agents who can render his enemies to Bulgaria, and so on.
It's low grade Mamet by way of Neil Simon and Sid Caesar. It's comic; it's crude; it's over the top. It's a cynical look at presidential politics with yuks, but little intelligent wit or irony. One of our finest playwrights is doing bottom fishing when he should be deep fishing. While England's Tom Stoppard is regaling us with epic achievement of "The Coast of Utopia," Mamet is serving up schlock.
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June 28, 2008

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