Boston Marriage is a bizarre trifle, an exceedingly strange exercise that's more important for where it stands in author David Mamet's canon than for any intrinsic value. In the fine production by Tampa's Jobsite Theater, there's topnotch acting, sharp directing, some moments of real humor — and still the thing is as odd as a mongoose on St. Pete Beach. You've got to admire Mamet's chutzpah in writing so uncharacteristic a play, but I'm not sure I can conscientiously recommend that you buy a ticket. Let's just say it's best recommended to die-hard Mamet fans — and for everyone who's been waiting for the phrase "Byzantine rodomontade" to show up in modern American theater. All others, be wary.
Let's get right to the heart of things — the many ways in which Marriage is a departure from Mamet's better-known works. In plays like American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross, the playwright's subjects are male; here they're women. In works like Sexual Perversity in Chicago and Speed-the-Plow, Mamet's subjects are straight; here they're lesbian. And in play after famous play, Mamet's subjects speak a garbled argot that's fragmentary, semi-coherent and laced with obscenities — whereas here they speak copiously, hyper-floridly and with literary precision.
In fact, the lingo of Boston Marriage is so far from typical Mamet-speak, one can only conclude that he wrote it as a signal that he won't be held hostage to any style — including his own. How else to explain a line like "Is this some gastronomic monomania of yours?" Or "Your errand done, pray, take your congé — you have shattered my heart"? Or "And do you begrudge me my keening?"
Monomania? Congé? Keening? Where are we?
In mid- to late-19th-century America apparently. At least, that's the implication of a passing reference to the Crimean War, and the Jobsite production features costumes (uncredited in my program) that might be expected in a Henry James epic, along with Scott Cooper's chintz-bedecked, decidedly retro set.
As to the story the play tells, it's just as minimal as in most Mamet works, and it seldom distracts from the drama's real center, its language. Anyway, Anna and Claire are lovers. But this hasn't stopped Anna from becoming mistress to a rich man — she has to find someone to support her — nor has it stopped Claire from falling in love with an innocent younger woman. When Claire asks Anna for the right to bring her new paramour to their house for an assignation, Anna is adamantly opposed.
But then she works out a compromise: Anna will let the seduction take place only if she's allowed to "set the scene" and watch the two lovers in the act. Claire agrees; the doorbell rings — and then everything goes wrong. It may be that not only will Claire lose her new love, but that Anna will lose her "protector" and sugar daddy. The two women struggle to keep afloat, not all that convincingly.
The only other character they encounter is the Maid, a Scottish lass who repeatedly interrupts at inopportune times and whom they variously tell to drop dead, disappear and shut up. Will Claire's fresh love object ever return? Will Anna "starve, the hollow percussion of my purse, a descant to that of my broken heart?"
The Jobsite cast is quite marvelous at giving these difficult words flesh. As Claire, Emilia Sargent offers further evidence that she's one of the top actresses in the Bay area, a charismatic presence whose attention to detail is astonishing. In Sargent's hands, Claire is an eminently sensible woman whose desire for a new lover doesn't for a minute signify any lack of respect for wounded Anna. Katrina Stevenson as Anna is also superb (though, looking younger than Sargent, certain gibes about her age don't really make sense). Stevenson's Anna is in love with Claire and Claire only, and accepts her role as a gentleman's mistress as a simple business arrangement to be welcomed. Like Sargent, Stevenson ultimately domesticates Mamet's dialogue, even finding the credibility of an exclamation like, "Oh fate but our own character congealed into a burning glass."
Finally, Alison Burns as the Maid — the only character who speaks ordinary English — is very funny, even after we've become used to the various running gags in which Mamet implicates her. Karla Hartley's direction is sure-handed from start to finish, and her lighting design is eloquent. This is as professional-looking a production as any you'll find in the area.
But does the play have any significance outside of the literary? Mamet's best work is about the difficulty of communicating, about fatal misunderstandings, about capitalism and masculinity. Boston Marriage, on the other hand, is about a trivial love triangle. Nothing real, nothing offstage, is ever at issue. Even the lesbian theme doesn't reach past the footlights. If the playwright's name were John Smith, I doubt that Boston Marriage would ever have gotten to the stage.
So I freely confess: I prefer the old Mamet.
Apparently, the new Mamet doesn't. And the result is this weird, otherworldly Boston Marriage.
This article appears in Feb 27 – Mar 4, 2008.