Farce majeure: David Mamet makes with the gay jokes, reflecting straight men to themselves.Romance * Written by David Mamet Noun 1. David Mamet - United States playwright (born in 1947) Mamet * Directed by Neil Pepe * Starring Bob Balaban Bob Balaban (born August 16, 1945) is an Academy Award-nominated American actor and director, best known for his collaborations with Christopher Guest. Biography Personal life Balaban was born Robert Elmer Balaban , Larry Bryggman, and Keith Nobbs * Atlantic Theater Company The Atlantic Theater Company runs an off-Broadway theater in a converted church in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City. The Atlantic also runs a state-of-the-art, 99-seat off-off-Broadway theater known as Stage 2. The Atlantic has had a long string of theatrical successes. , New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of (through May 1) David Mamet, the playwright and filmmaker best known for tough-guy works like Glengarry Glen Ross, seems to be going through a gay spell. His last play, Boston Marriage, was a period drama about power dynamics in a lesbian relationship. His newest, Romance, having its world premiere off-Broadway, is an insane farce that looks like Mamet's version of a Christopher Durang play. Ostensibly os·ten·si·ble adj. Represented or appearing as such; ostensive: His ostensible purpose was charity, but his real goal was popularity. it's a courtroom drama in which a pill-popping judge (the hilarious Larry Bryggman) presides over a tedious trial. The fact that Middle East peace negotiations are going on nearby triggers philosophizing phi·los·o·phize v. phi·los·o·phized, phi·los·o·phiz·ing, phi·los·o·phiz·es v.intr. 1. To speculate in a philosophical manner. 2. that descends into vicious insults directed at virtually every race, creed, and color. When the prosecutor (Bob Balaban), whom we've seen sipping cosmos with his thong-clad boy toy, Bernard (a.k.a. Bunny, a.k.a. Buns, played by Keith Nobbs), comes out in court, he sets off a nutty string of gay revelations. Before you can say "flight to Ibiza," they're all floating wild theories: Do gay men prefer movies in black and white? Was Abe Lincoln Jewish? Did Shakespeare pluck his eyebrows? Clearly tossed off as a lark by a prolific author, the play's take on contemporary life as farce comes off as zany but obvious. Still, Romance does ring changes on an old Mamet tactic: He uses homophobic humor to express straight men's insecurity about their masculinity while mocking it at the same time. Shewey is the author of the biography Sam Shepard. |
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