Plays 2: Reunion / Dark Pony / A Life in the Theatre / The Woods / Lakeboat / Edmond

Collected Plays #2

by David Mamet

"The finest American playwright of his generation" (Sunday Times) Reunion shows the meeting between a father and daughter after nearly twenty years of separation: "It would be hard to over-praise the way Mr Mamet suggests behind the probing, joshing family chat, an extraordinary sense of pain and loss although the play has a strong social comment about the destructively cyclical effect of divorce, it is neither sour nor defeatist" (Guardian); In Dark Play, a father tells his five-year-old daughter a story about an Indian boy and his pony "a subtle, lyrical, dreamlike vignette" (Star Tribune); in The Woods, a young man and woman spend the night in a cabin together "a beautifully conceived love story" (Chicago Daily News); Lakeboat portrays eight crew members of a merchant ship exchanging wild fantasies about sex, gambling and violence "Richly overheard talk loopy, funny construction." (Village Voice); Edmond is an odyssey through the disturbing, suspended dark void of a contemporary New York "it is also a technically adventurous piece pared brilliantly to the bone, highly theatrical in its scenic elisions." (Financial Times)

Genres: Theatre, Fiction, Drama, Plays

295 pages, Paperback

First published September 23, 1996

About the author

David Alan Mamet is an American author, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and film director. His works are known for their clever, terse, sometimes vulgar dialogue and arcane stylized phrasing, as well as for his exploration of masculinity.

As a playwright, he received Tony nominations for Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow (1988). As a screenwriter, he received Oscar nominations for The Verdict (1982) and Wag the Dog (1997).

Mamet's recent books include The Old Religion (1997), a novel about the lynching of Leo Frank; Five Cities of Refuge: Weekly Reflections on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (2004), a Torah commentary, with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner; The Wicked Son (2006), a study of Jewish self-hatred and antisemitism; and Bambi vs. Godzilla, an acerbic commentary on the movie business.

Reviews

[j_ay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reunion **ooo (2 stars)
Dark Pony **ooo
A Life in the Theatre ***oo
The Woods *oooo
Lakeboat **ooo
Edmond ***oo

[?0?0?0 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of plays, putting together many early works, from David Mamet, certainly contains a few of his weakest works ("Lakeboat", "Dark Pony", "A Life in the Theatre"), but it does include the deliciously mad, "Edmond", and two plays that deal well with a pair of people poor at communicating to one another ("Reunion", "The Woods"). A good but not great book for fans of Mamet's work--perhaps not as rewarding for those who are new to his writing.

[Kris Veldhuizen · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Mamet’s dialogue is absolutely spot-on. I love the way his characters lose their train of thought, interrupt each other, say things under their breath, say one thing but mean an other… etc etc. The reason I started writing these sort of plays myself.

Reunion.
A father and daughter awkwardly meet after a twenty year separation.

Dark Pony.
A father tells his five-year-old daughter a story she has heard many times before, yet is still very engaged in.

A Life in the Theatre.
Two stage actors, one old and experienced and the other young, are followed in different, mostly backstage scenes.

The Woods.
A man and woman spend an evening, night and morning in a cabin in the woods. They have a history and seem to love each other, but in the end they end up fighting.

Lakeboat.
Eight men, crew on a merchant ship, talk about many different subjects, from booze to girls to suicide.

Edmond.
Disillusioned with his life, Edmond leaves his wife, unsuccessfully searches for sex in Manhattan, kills a waitress and ends up in prison.

My favorite two plays were Dark Pony and Edmond. The former was really sweet, especially the way the little girl was written and how she would, to herself, often quietly repeat her father’s words.
Edmond was a sort of fall-from-grace kind of story where you witness the protagonist slowly and believably sliding down the slope of insanity. Really convincingly written.