Product Description

One of America's most revered and provocative dramatists, David Mamet conquers new territory with this droll comedy of errors set in a Victorian drawing room. Anna and Claire are two bantering, scheming ladies of fashion who have long lived together on the fringes of upper-class society. Anna has just become the mistress of a wealthy man, from whom she has received an enormous emerald and an income to match. Claire, meanwhile, is infatuated with a respectable young lady and wants to enlist the jealous Anna's help for an assignation. As the two women exchange barbs and take turns taunting Anna's hapless parlour maid, Claire's young inamorata suddenly appears, setting off a crisis that puts the valuable emerald at risk and threatens the women's future."Devastatingly funny ...exceptionally clever" - New York Times "Brilliant ...One of Mamet's most satisfying and accomplished plays, and one of the funniest American comedies in years" - New York Post "Wickedly, wittily entertaining ...what makes the play such brilliant fun is its marriage of glinting period artifice and contemporary frankness" - Boston Phoenix "[Mamet's characters] are at each other's throats with a wit akin to characters out of Wilde and a vengeance not unlike those from Pinter or Edward Albee" - Boston Globe Boston Marriage was first performed at the American Repertory Theatre, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in June 1999. It received its British premiere at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in March 2001.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #638554 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

About the Author
David Mamet was born in Chicago in 1947. He studied at Goddard College, Vermont, and at the Neighbor hood Playhouse School of Theatre in New York. His plays, screenplays and books on drama practice hav e met with glowing reviews and been acclaimed as classics of their kind.

Customer Reviews

Dazzling
I'd urge anyone who enjoys clever use of language or the plays of David Mamet (one and the same thing of course) and who won't be able to see this play in performance to buy this. It's a drawing room comedy on a lesbian theme (don't worry there's nothing to frighten the horses); think, if you will, of "The Killing of Sister George" meets "The Importance of Being Earnest". Arch, bitchy and camp it may be but it's as funny as hell and ultimately very touching. But my God, the language!

Disappointing
Mamet is a writer of a genius, but this play does him no justice. Yes, the language is dazzling but it's also self-conscious and heavily soaked in whimsy and pastiche. Unlike the playwright's other works set within a recognisable brutal modern world, Boston Marriage languishes in the ranks of sub-genre somewhere between East Coast comedy of errors and drawing room farce. The dramatist has elsewhere written incisively and well on the craft of dramatic structure and, indeed, this play is consumately plotted. It's just a shame the content is so thin and undernourished. It feels, in short, like a weekend writing exercise from the pen of a major talent.