I’ve never been so jealous of a title.  Or a play.  I’m always in search of that elusive two or three-hander with a single set.  Simple.  Real.  Breathtaking.  This is that play.  Besides being struck by the depth of the characters, the richness of the plot, the conciseness of the dialogue, I am also taken with the minor stage directions.  Throughout the script, the playwright inserts little directions like (With tremendous simplicity), (With a quiet fervor), (As delicately as possible), or (With enormous tenderness).  We all know the cliche of “the first thing a director crosses out are the stage directions,” but these would not threaten a real director.  In fact, they protect the playwright from overwriting, which is important in a play about larger than life ideas and loss of life realities.  This is a quiet play.  A hushed play.  One that asks some of the most important questions an individual can ask of self, other, and God.  And in a beautiful way, it does not offer a tidy answer.  All three characters are searching for something they can neither find nor understand.  But in the end, they found each other.  And I am just so happy I found this play.

Savage. Brutal. Honest. ‘In-yer-face.’ But a well-made-play? This uncompromising scrutiny of the relationships between characters who are utterly self-absorbed (yet full of understandable longing) is all verbal, rather than visual. Identities are fabricated and dismantled based solely on what they say about about themselves, or what they say about each other. At a time when dramas were supposedly ‘pushing the envelope’ through graphic visuals (very few, by the way, which have earned a life in repertory), this playwright puts the envelope through the paper shredder with a word, a phrase. The sudden turns from intimacy to brutality, from tenderness to deception feel arbitrary and random, but they are perfectly planned and motivated. Because their sex lives more resemble a humiliating game of musical chairs, it is easy to believe there is no forward momentum, only repetition. But the whole play - and each scene - revolves around the beginning and endings of their relationships with each other and with themselves. Compare classical Farce. Compare drama of the Restoration. It’s a near perfect match, only in this play, farce has isolating consequences and there is no hope of restoring identity. Relationships, like everything else, have been commodified. They are merely exchanges. And if that truth were spoon fed to an audience (or in the tradition of late 90s plays, shoved down the throats of an audience), it would be easy to dismiss. But since it is beautifully constructed and based solely on the language, it is less easy to ignore. As Marber himself says, ‘It was always part of the conception of the play that I would write about big ugly emotions contained within some formally beautiful structure: which makes it crueller.’ It also makes it ‘well-made,’ which in my opinion means well made for its particular time period, and after.

What really is the difference between a sonnet and a steak sandwich? And why should we know the difference? In this beautiful play, the cancer-ridden scholar grapples with her transition from researcher to researched, subject to object, reader of text to a text being read. And what a painful transition it is (as many transitions are). Like Prospero, she cannot be in ‘the book’ and in the world at the same time, and she discovers that, perhaps, she made the wrong choice. Or at least, it is now time to go. What makes this play work so effectively is the playwright’s ability to control our distance. Sometimes we are comfortably far away where we can observe, listen, watch, judge. Other times, we are brought forward within an inch of our own lives, sitting right there in the hospital bed. This control, at just the right moments, taking us in and out, not only keeps the play from falling into sentimentality and melodrama, but also secures the wrenching conclusion.  As an audience, we witness our character struggle with the metaphysical question: Where does the true self reside, in the body or the mind? And in the end, she (and hopefully we) will recognize it is not the metaphysical that will provide the answer, but the physical. It is answered in that simple, kind, sharing of the popsicle between nurse and patient that matters more than poetry. And serves as a reminder that no one on their death bed thinks, “If I had only sent more emails. Spent more time in the office. Written more blogs.” Death be not proud.  Life neither.

There’s an old writing exercise that goes something like this: Character A loves Character B. Character B loves Character C. And Character C loves himself. I always thought this forced triangle would result in an unsustainable, artificial play. Not so in this case. Matt (the professional dreamer) loves Christina (the professional lover) who loves Davis (the professional narcissist). But Rapp is the true professional. He reveals information so indirectly you often forget that it is information. The result being you feel like you’ve always known this or that about these characters your are only now meeting. He also shows no fear and allows his characters “to go there,” if you know what I mean. And none of it feels cheap because it is all so private, so “It’s my last chance, what have I got to lose ‘cept myself, which is hardly worth holding on to.” While there is some satisfaction that justice does (or at least eventually will) prevail in the end, the most satisfying aspect of this play is that it matches its own description of Amsterdam: “Totally familiar and dreamlike at the same time.”

How can a ‘two-hander’ be so thrilling, so savage, so compelling and controversial and engaging and dramatic? How can two characters, a desk, a bench, and a phone inflame such audience response? Simple. Mamet makes us fill in the blanks. His famous pauses are not just for show, nor is his indirect dialogue. He forces us to project our own meaning into the situation, onto the characters, thus colluding us in this unravelling of identities. We insert ourselves and our own assumptions. We cannot remain objective or at a distance because we too are (mis)interpreting their words. And this is not a play about who is right and who is wrong. They are both right. It is a play about who has the power, and how does one hold on to it. And how does one hold on to oneself in a world where power, not meaning, defines who one really is? John and Carol are both to blame for their own destruction because their righteousness in asserting their self-identity is unrelenting, unforgiving.  On the surface, yes, it is a play about sexual harassment, gender politics, higher education, etc.  But the real core of this tragedy is watching two people who — rather than being who they think they really are — discover that they are exactly who others think them to be.

The play is a magical “how to” manual for playwrights.  Prospero teaches us how to write a Comedy, a Tragedy, a History, a Romance all in one play.  He shows us exactly what elements the playwright needs: for example, here’s what young lovers say and do at the beginning of love, how old men feel and act at the end of life, why vengeful plots repeat and repeat, when happy endings are possible and at what cost.  But Prospero, like all playwrights, is a guilty creature.  He creates illusions.  Masques.  He grants us the ability to experience without the actual experience. To cross boundaries without risk.  To observe from a distance.  To act in safety and seclusion.  To speak secrets and seek revenge.  Yet his work is all tissue paper.  Art.  Artifice.  Words.  And, like all playwrights, he knows it.  For when theatre is gone, it’s gone, along with “the great globe itself.” Yet the illusion is necessary for life, especially for youth (since young people think the world is real, permanent).  Caliban the monster (monere = to warn) knows its fleeting nature too: “. . . when I wak’d,/I cried to dream again.”  He warns us of Prospero’s “rough magic.”  Yet the young sometimes rescue the old.  The old sometimes forgive.  And we sometimes release the actors from the stage — the drama from its spell — through our applause.  Earlier, Prospero reprimanded Ferdinand during the performance and said “Hush and be mute,/Or else our spell is marr’d.”  But once the “revels now are ended” and the “charms are all o’erthrown,” it is Prospero who asks for our spell-breaking applause, then reconsiders, and instead, asks for a benediction. Do not clap.  Do not break the spell.  But pray.  Pray for a character who desperately wants to live forever, created by a playwright who knows he will not.