★★ Bitter Wheat
There seems to be an unfortunate career pattern for ground-breaking playwrights, at least in our American sphere. Write one or two arguably or inarguably great plays that shake up the field early on, and likely as not you wind up with a subsequent string of plays that fail even while your early hits are continually lauded and successfully revived.
This was the trajectory of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee. All experienced difficulty arranging productions of new work despite their celebrity; when they did, they were likely to be savaged by audiences and critics alike. Of the three, only Albee reclaimed the magic in his final years.
David Mamet doesn’t quite belong in the same class as the above-mentioned dramatists, but there are similarities. Sexual Perversity in Chicago caused audiences to take note; American Buffalo brought the playwright to Broadway, albeit briefly; and the savage and blasphemous Glengarry Glen Ross was so brilliantly written that audiences suddenly flocked to see the New Mamet Play. His latest Broadway offerings have been the little-appreciated November and Race, followed by the roundly trounced The Anarchist and China Doll. Even Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf combined couldn’t make much of November. Still active as he enters his seventies, will Mamet be able to “pull an Albee”? Perhaps with his latest play, Bitter Wheat?
Not this time. The playwright has set himself a most difficult task—writing a comedy about a current-day front-page sexual abuse scandal—and is more or less done in by the obstacles. But let us first point out that the writing is good, with many passages of top-notch Mametian discourse. This was decidedly not in evidence in his recent plays, which meandered along purposelessly. Watching Bitter Wheat at the Garrick, the first surprise is that the playwright has rediscovered Mamet-speak, with razor-sharp, scabrously vicious wit flung from the mouth of babes.
Or, rather, the mouth of John Malkovich. For it is John Malkovich, flinging insults and milking pity from within a comically unwieldy fat suit, who has a personal field day up there. We rarely see this unique actor on stage anymore, which is a pity. Bitter Wheat might not be a success, but Malkovich sure is.
Mamet has concocted a character named Barney Fein, a bloated, vicious, dishonorable, blasphemous, wildly successful Hollywood producer based in New York. In the first scene of this three-scene play, we meet this buffoonish Barney, who is most obviously a parody of the real-life Harvey Weinstein. He behaves badly, cynically setting a trap for an unsuspecting butterfly. In the final scene, we again see Barney—just out of jail—comically wheeling and dealing and bribing his way out of his predicament (with, let it be added, the cooperation of said butterfly).
The playwriting problem comes in the second scene, in which our hero coddles, cajoles and ultimately abuses a young actress eager for stardom but not eager for Harvey. Wait—did I say Harvey? In the first and third scenes, it is the parodical Barney. But the events in the second seem to be lifted from actual court filings against Weinstein. How do you switch from a likably malicious anti-hero—sort of a modern-day Sheridan Whiteside, if you know what I mean—to an accused, but not thus far convicted, serial predator? Where are the laughs in that? Are we supposed to keep on laughing?
The playwright has written himself into a seemingly unresolvable trap. Is the character he has created the clown Barney, or the monster Harvey? Both, it seems; but once we have witnessed the abuse—the actual act, thankfully, happening out of view—how do we slip back into the entertainment provided by the crafty Malkovich as the irascible Barney? How is the audience supposed to react? Should one just think, “It’s OK, let’s laugh some more?”
Making this fiction/fact divide even more dramatically difficult are the details of the case. The now-familiar descriptions of Weinstein’s behavior are not only despicable but bizarre: Too weird to be true, which gives them the ring of truth, for who would, or could, make this stuff up? Mamet has chosen to repeat them verbatim (or close enough), rather than coming up with a fictional variation for Barney.
After which you might think: All right, Mr. Playwright, seize the platform and do something about it. Instead we just go back to Malkovich making fat man jokes. One could also take issue with the scripted behavior of the two female characters, the victimized Yung Kim Li (Ionna Kimbook) and the executive assistant/facilitator, Sondra (Doon Mackichan), but we’ll leave that for another discussion.
The play is impeccably mounted under the direction of the author. Christopher Oram provides a stylishly vulgar movie producer aerie, stark and sleek. He also provides chairs that are decidedly too narrow for Malkovich’s fat suit. (There also seems to be a sly reference to Oram’s award-winning design for Red. As the houselights dim before the second act, a patch of color appears on the act curtain. The lady next to me said to her companion, “Look! Rothko!”—and there it was.)
Malkovich is supported by a cast of six, not that he needs much support. Mackichan and Kimbook do fine, under the circumstances. Of the various men onstage, Alexander Arnold is delightful as Barney’s low-level office assistant.
There is a placard on the entrance wall at the Garrick saying “the first act of this play contains depictions of sexual manipulation and harassment that some may find upsetting.” Indeed. There is also one of those “work of fiction” program disclaimers, stating that the characters and incidents “either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously,” and any resemblance to actual persons is “entirely coincidental.” How do you spell “humph”?
But whatever the defects in Bitter Wheat might be, this certainly does not seem to be the work of a playwright at the end of his string.
Bitter Wheat opened June 19, 2019, at the Garrick Theatre (London) and runs through September 21. Tickets and information: bitterwheatplay.com
