November

Just in time for Election Day, Center Theater Group has mounted David Mamet's wicked political satire, November. First produced in 2008, just before Barack Obama was voted into office, the play gleefully pokes fun at a fictional president of the United States, Charles Smith (Ed Begley, Jr.). Smith, we learn quickly, has been a bust as president, a do-nothing dimwit who has only one goal in life: to be re-elected for another four years.

Sneering at the notion is his own chief-of-staff, Archer Brown (Rod McLachan), who thinks Smith is not only a lame-duck president but a dead duck. Instead of knocking himself out on the campaign trail, he should be writing his concession speech.

Even Smith's unseen wife agrees with this assessment: in a phone call she asks whether they will be able to keep their sofa when they move out of the White House. When the president doubts whether such a thing is legal, she replies, "But I've had it reupholstered."

Political salvation appears in the form of a lobbyist for the turkey industry (Todd Weeks), who is willing to pay a bribe to the president if he agrees to let two turkeys lick his hand on national TV. The bribe -- ahem, campaign donation -- is negotiated upwards to the ten-million-dollar level, enough to jump-start Smith's moribund ad campaign. If Weeks doesn't comply, Smith will advise the nation to eat tuna instead of turkey on Thanksgiving Day.

So goes Mamet's comic assault on the state of the union. By play's end, he manages to poke fun not only at rightwing politicians and lobbyists but at a liberal lesbian Jew, Clarice Bernstein (Felicity Huffman) -- Smith's speechwriter -- and at a Native American chieftain, Dwight Crackle (Gregory Cruz), who wants permission to build gambling casinos on Nantucket's national preserve.

The America that is depicted in November is completely and utterly venal, corrupt and mindless. It's also hysterically funny, thanks to Mamet's pungent dialogue and to the skilled actors who deliver it. Their masterful way with farce, aided by Scott Zigler's snappy direction (and Takeshi Kata's sumptuous Oval Office) help make November memorable.