Presidential politics get Mamet treatment

By Mike Pearson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published October 30, 2008 at 7 p.m.

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Michael R. Duran, left, and Kevin Hart in "November."

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REVIEW

With the 2008 presidential election just days away, the regional premiere of David Mamet's satirical November at the Avenue Theatre couldn't be more timely.

You know Mamet: Topical, combative, profane.

All three traits are on display in November, the story of an incumbent president facing certain defeat in his re-election bid, who lashes out at staff members and Oval Office visitors. President Charles H.P. Smith (Kevin Hart) can't understand why the country has turned on him, and why his own party refuses to give him money for a last-minute blitz of TV ads.

It falls to his executive assistant Archer (James O'Hagan-Murphy) to explain to Smith that no one likes him. He's been an ineffectual leader. The country is holding its breath until he is gone.

Smith does not plan to go gently into that good night. He needs $200 million for political ads and for his presidential library. To that end, he decides to shakedown the first visitor he sees this day: a representative for the National Association of Turkey and Turkey By-Product Manufacturers (Daymond Caylo).

The poor lobbyist is ambushed. He has arrived to have the president do his customary pardoning of the token Thanksgiving turkey. Instead, he finds a cornered politician willing to go on TV and pardon all turkeys if the association doesn't come up with a big chunk of change.

Smith also has 11th hour concerns about his legacy. He needs a good speech to rally the public to his side. So what if his lesbian speechwriter (Laura Norman) is home sick after having flown to China to adopt a baby? He wants her in his office pronto. What she wants, in exchange, is for the president to marry her and her lover on national TV. That'll wake the nation up.

Toss in a Native American chief (Michael R. Duran) with an ax to grind, and this November is both politically incorrect and deliciously topical.

Under Robert Wells' assured direction, it plays like a sitcom on nitrous. From the start the plot is played at a fevered pitch, with the president spewing all manner of insults, his chief of staff Archer ever scheming and the First Lady (whom we never see) in a funk that she can't keep the couch from the executive residence after the election.

One can't say this is a play about George W. Bush, although Smith's drastically low poll numbers might suggest that. Instead, Mamet seems determined to show how absolute power corrupts. Coupled with absolute incompetence, the nation's chief executive becomes a rabid groundhog threatened even by his own shadow.

No matter how daggerlike Mamet's words, it takes a solid cast to breathe life into the mayhem. Kevin Hart excels as President Smith; he rants and rages and pouts like a diva in a pinstriped suit. His paranoia is palpable.

James O'Hagan-Murphy has a nice turn as the skeezy assistant, and Laura Norman's lesbian-with-an-agenda couldn't be more entertaining. Norman's Clarice Bernstein walks softly and carries a big stick. The only thing bigger is her unyielding attitude.

Daymond Caylo provides the slapstick quotient as a lobbyist on the ropes, and Michael Duran's Dwight Crackle has the ferocity one might expect of an angry Indian, but he's not one of Mamet's better-developed characters.

Forget red states and blue states. When it comes to Mamet there is only one state: Cynicism tempered by truth.

November

* Grade: A-

* When and where: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday through Nov. 22. Avenue Theater, 417 E. 17th Ave.

* Information: 303-321-5925 or avenuetheater.com

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