Bitter Wheat
by David Mamet
Directed by David Mamet
Designed by Christopher Oram
The Garrick Theatre, London
Thursday 20th June 2019 evening
CAST
John Malkovich – Barney Fein, movie producer
Doon Mackichan – Sondra
Ionna Kimbrook – Yung Kim Li
Alexander Arnold – Roberto
Zephryn Taitte – Charles Arthur Brown
Matthew Pidgeon – The Writer
Teddy Kempner – Doctor Wald
Barney Fein (John Malkovich) and The Writer (Matthew Pidgeon)
A world premiere, with John Malkovich returning to the stage after 33 years in a new David Mamet play, with Mamet directing too. The role of movie producer Barney Fein is based on a generic mogul according to Malkovich on breakfast TV, but the detail fits closely to Harvey Weinstein. Fein prides himself on being liberal, supports good causes, contributes heavily to the Democrats, has a serious self-image problem – he is fat (Malkovich is padded up). He favour black suits and white shirts, He is a predator. American reports suggest there was a deliberate choice to premiere in London, not on Broadway because the references are so obvious.
My M.A. thesis was on writers, novelists and playwrights in Hollywood, and I was intrigued as soon as I saw the stage photo above which is right at the start of the play. The Writer doesn’t even get to have a name in this play. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nathanael West and Budd Schulberg’s Hollywood novels and stories came into mind. The movie mogul as monster has many illustrious forebears: Harry Cohn of Columbia, Louis B. Mayer and Samuel Goldwyn of MGM, Jack Warner of Warner Bros, Darryl F. Zanuck of 20th Century Fox for starters.
On the writer’s part, I cringed at his crass lines like ‘You are evil.’ He has been offered 200,000 dollars for a script which Fein dislikes, so Fein declines to pay, demanding a rewrite. The writer refuses to accept that and will have to sue. As a professional writer for forty years, I snorted in total disbelief at the character. You’d have to be a professional to get that offer, and you can’t join the Writers’ Guild unless you are. This nameless guy says he will complain to them. Shit happens. This is film. Everyone from the producer to the boom operator will have an opinion on your script. They’re probably wrong. You should know that. You go in expecting to do three or four rewrites. If you don’t like it, self-publish novels. I do. It’s fun. Practically though – Re-write and invoice. Nobody precious enough to think their script beyond criticism would be there.
Ionna Kimbrook as Yung Kim Li
The play moves to a visiting Korean actress. Fein(Stein) gets several racist / ignorant comments confusing South and North Korea, Korean and Chinese as tonal languages, and suspecting a North Korean plot to get him. It turns out she is British from Kent, of Korean ancestry, as is Iona Kimbrook, who plays her. We assume those details would be production / actor dependent. Her Asian film is called Dark Water. He wants to buy it in and distribute it, not that he’s seen it. Of course he wants to change the title to Bitter Wheat – there is no wheat in it, she protests.
Link: Harvey Weinstein adapted or subtitled several Asian movies and animations. He is also after her body, as the regular ‘Special Woman’ he has asked to visit is getting married today (so, tell her husband to wait in the car, he suggests.) Fein has already downed his little blue pills so is desperate. She is hungry after a 27 hour flight without eating. She didn’t eat because of a ‘stomach irritation problem’ presumably the runs, but that problem does not put him off. He promises major roles, including an Asian Gone With The Wind, and the lead role in Anne Frank. His sexual suggestions range from watching him masturbate to oral sex.
On his sexual predation, he keeps referring to his self-image problems of being fat and a ‘kike.’ Mamet set me thinking here. I think he pins it. Fein’s aggression is based on inner insecurity. Workplace predators often seem to fit that self-image. Ugly bastards in their own self-perception who use power to get sex in exchange for work benefits- I include here politicians, local government, the supermarket down the street, university lecturers and anywhere with males having power over female careers. Or male careers for Kevin Spacey. The good-looking predators like JFK or Bill Clinton or rock stars or film stars perhaps did not have the same self-image need to swap sexual favors so directly for rewards.
She escapes by pressing the fire alarm. The very short second part comes after the consequences – it eventually develops that he was arrested. He spends much of the time trying to work it out with his PA – a marvellous performance by Doon Mackichan. Malkovich and Doon Mackichan were a remarkable pairing. During the play he hears that his mother is dead, shot by an ‘illegal immigrant’ because she was Jewish. The impeccably liberal Fein rails against demonizing the perpetrator with the word ‘illegal’ or ‘immigrant.’ Doon Mackichan just keeps calmly repeating ‘he killed your mother.’ The liberal image is more important than personal family to him. Even she, his most loyal insider, comes to realize the game us up. She has invested so much emotionally over the years, but now it’s all over as the reports come in that he is been dumped from every committee and organization and eventually that he has lost the company. It was in his morher’s name and she has left it to Greenpeace and Mason. The play moves to a satisfying end, no plot spoiler.
Reviewers slammed it on press night, and oh, how universally it was panned. We saw it the next night and the cast, if they read the reviews, must have been gratified by the response, I’d say 5% to 10%. standing to applaud. It was still enthusiastic.
Reviews compared it to the superior Mamet Hollywood play, Speed-The-Plow which we saw with Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum at the Old Vic. Subsequent events place Kevin Spacey in the Barney Fein producer/ director casting couch exploitation role, though I will say that in both Speed-the-Plow and Richard III, Spacey was totally brilliant. The best Richard III I’ve ever seen.
Doon Mackichan as Sondra, Fein’s PA
We were taken by Malcovich’s personal charisma on stage and the ability to humanize this autistic, fat, ugly predator. It was a disciplined, measured performance with small physical climaxes – mainly due to him expressing Fein’s physical ineptness. We believed that Malkovich was that guy. Doon Mackichan also projected star quality. She knew exactly what had been going on, and when she had to jump ship.
Star vehicle? Yes, that is a criticism, in that the play relies on a star actor or two. Isn’t that generally true of Mamet? Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum in Speed-the-Plow, then John Goodman and Damian Lewis in American Buffalo. These are not plays that will shine with minor companies, nor in Am Dram. In contrast I’ve seen non-stellar versions of Pinter or Martin McDonagh, and they worked. It’s my general American play rant- small cast, star actors, elaborate set. Christopher Oram remains our top stage designer with three Hollywood deco sets. The fake Corbusier armchairs caught our eye. We have two as well.
I’ll take issue with the programme, which states:
(Mamet) is surely the only American dramatist to have crossed over so successfully into movies.”
Ok, Glengarry Glen Ross. The Untouchables. The Postman Always Rings Twice (an adaptation).
Arthur Miller did The Misfits and Let’s Make Love, as well as transferring his own plays All My Sons and Death of A Salesman to the screen.
Tennessee Williams scripted versions of his plays – A Streetcar Named Desire, with Marlon Brando, Boom with Taylor and Burton, the Glass Menagerie with Kirk Douglas, Baby Doll, Suddenly Last Summer.
Ben Hecht made his name as a playwright with The Front Page, adapted it for film, then did 70 more screenplays. I could go on with Clifford Odets, Ira Levin and most of the others.
Mamet is a successful playwright on screen, but much less successful than (say) Harold Pinter. But, yes, he knows Hollywood, but not as amusingly as the writers of Episodes, the TV series, which does the same theme with TV producers, but much funnier.
The theatre architecture doesn’t help appraisal. We were in row P under the balcony in the stalls and a lot of sound was lost- The Garrick is great in the best seats, but not further back. The Branagh season took place there. We know it. Transfer it to somewhere more intimate like Chichester Minerva or the Young Vic and ratings would go up. To us provincials, used to driving to theatres, the amount of alcohol swigging in the audience was a turn-off too. London audiences use public transport so see theatre as a booze up, so it seems to me.
We were not as harsh as the collective criticism for a change. It is short and quite static. In spite of that, the play grew in stature as discussed it the next day. Tight ensemble performances. The play creaked a bit – reference The Producers and I’ll Never Forget Whatsisname for plot details. But maybe what people objected to was a PC, liberal, Democrat sexual predator. Make him a Trump supporting one and people might have identified more smoothly.
Three star.
***
L to R: Alexander Arnold, John Malkovich, Ionna Kimbrook, Doon Mackichan
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID;
4 star
Quentin Letts, Sunday Times ****
3 star
David Lister, Independent, ***
2 star
Michael Billington, Guardian **
Domenic Cavendish, Telegraph, **
Domenic Maxwell, Times **
Henry Hitchins, Standard **
Holly Williams, Time Out, **
Alice Jones, The I, **
1 star
Tim Bano, The Stage *
Sarah Crompton, What’s On Stage, *
LINKS ON THIS BLOG:
DAVID MAMET
American Buffalo, by David Mamet, Wyndham’s Theatre, London
JOHN MALKOVICH
Reds 2 (FILM)
DOON MAKICHAN
Twelfth Night, National Theatre, 2017 (Feste)
MATTHEW PIDGEON
Salomé, RSC 2017 (Herod)
TEDDY KEMPNER
Caroline, or Change, Chichester 2017
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