Romance

Straddling the offense

By JONATHAN DONALDSON

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With all of the four-letter words, racial epithets and flagrant taboos playing out on the stage of the A.R.T. these days, a writer has to wonder—is David Mamet's Romance safe for audiences? Despite big laughs from the crowd, lead actor Will LeBow wonders the same. "I was walking out of the theater at the end of the night and an elderly couple looked up at me," he says. "A weird expression came over the gentleman's face, and he said, 'That play ... might have been the funniest play I've ever seen in my life!' I thought he was going to say it was offensive!"

Anyone who has ever suffered the drab ceremony of justice, with its long waits and uncomfortable benches, will have a lot to savor in Mamet's courtroom satire from 2005. LeBow is a perfectly boorish and "attention-challenged" picture of a judge, right down to his high black socks and pinhead bailiff (James Senti). A bumbling chiropractor (Remo Airaldi) stands on the verge of admitting to some utterly filthy but unnamed deed. Meanwhile, his ever-exasperated and sanctimonious attorney (Jim True Frost) clings to what hope he can against the cold-hearted prosecutor (Thomas Derrah).

And then all hell breaks loose. After making an anti-Semitic remark toward his Jewish client, the defense attorney (a Protestant) rushes in with an apology reeking of false modesty. True colors are shown, resulting in a tremendous hurricane of religious slurs, epithets and imagery thrown between the two men like Molotov cocktails. All the while, behind closed doors, a lover's quarrel between the uncaring prosecutor and his devoted partner, Bernard (Carl Foreman), burns like the roast in their oven. If anyone in the audience doesn't feel included in the offensiveness by the end of Act I, the actors haven't done their job.

"There are a couple of reasons why it doesn't offend people," says LeBow. "We did a play several years ago called Ubu Rock, which was a takeoff on the Ubu plays written in Paris in the early part of the last century. They were written to offend. The play certainly has a lot of the same language, but it's almost an equal-opportunity offender. Also it's done in the context of comedy, which Mamet is terrific at." And it's true, as every cry of "fucking Jew!" is met with a "fucking goy!" and every stereotype met with an equal and opposite stereotype. Most importantly, Mamet reinforces the notion that behind hatred lays ignorance. The characters don't even know why they hate one another.

By all being attacked, all are spared. The A.R.T. is acutely aware of this, as a message scrolls on a teleprompter outside the theater: "You may be offended if you are: Jewish, Elderly, A Carpenter, A Capricorn," ad nauseam. If anyone is not spared, it is the legal system, a noble target, according to LeBow: "The old playwright Molière used to really poke fun at authority figures. I think that Mamet's doing that here. We walk around thinking these people are probably invested in serving the community and serving fellow man, and quite often, it's just a job. And a job they hate sometimes!"

ROMANCE

THROUGH SUN 6.7.09

AMERICAN REPERTORY THEATRE

LOEB DRAMA CENTER

64 BRATTLE ST.

HAVARD SQ., CAMBRIDGE

617.547.8300

TUE-THU/7:30PM, FRI-SAT/8PM, SUN/7:30PM, SAT-SUN/2PM

ALL AGES/$25-$79

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