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Disturbing childhood play without a plot
REVIEW - THE CRYPTOGRAM
Donmar Warehouse
A QUICK scan of American playwright and screenwriter David Mamet’s programme notes and you know you are in for a rough ride.
We hear of a disturbing childhood wrought with psychological pain and family dinners that from an early age became associated “with the notion of blood”.
The five-minute bell felt like a death knell.
A cryptogram is loosely defined as “anything written in cipher, or in such a form that a key is required to understand and put together the letters”.
Was I about to be indulged in an electric action-packed tale of code-breakers in 1960s Chicago? No such luck.
John, a young boy who would give Danny from the Shining nightmares, will not sleep. The boy is burdened with consciousness and grand philosophy. He pesters his parents on meaning, mortality and human nature.
Ignorance is sleep and from that premature consciousness he is doomed to walk the night.
John’s mother Donny, here played by Kim Cattral of Sex and the City fame, suffers a near nervous breakdown as the men in her life cheat, lie and disappear. She is comforted by Del (Douglas Henshall), an insecure crank who appears to forge a meaningful relationship with the problem child. There are three mercifully short 20-minute scenes set inside the mother’s house.
Admirably acted there were whoops at curtain. But it was hard to tell why. Surely only those with a triple doctorate in obscurity studies could have walked away with anything bordering on an interpretation.
Without a plot Mamet’s probe into the futility of mankind felt tragic and – but not in the Shakespearean sense.
Until November 25
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