Mamet Takes on the Chief Executive

NEW YORK — You might be forgiven for thinking that Nathan Lane was shot out of a cannon when the curtain rises on "November," David Mamet's maniacally funny new comedy now producing waves of laughter at Broadway's Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

Lane explodes across the set — which happens to be the oval office of the president of the United States. The actor plays the chief executive, a volatile fellow with the deceptively bland name of Charles Smith. Lane is anything but bland as he ricochets around the room, spewing obscenities, mostly of the f-word variety. After all, this is a play by the man who wrote "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "American Buffalo."

Things aren't going well for Smith's re-election campaign. Contributions have dried up. Even his staff expects defeat as election day draws near. Heck, his speechwriter has written a concession speech. And now there isn't enough money for television advertising or, worse, Smith's presidential library. What's a president without his own sturdy repository of record?

The man needs money and thinks he can find it in turkeys — specifically the bird the president pardons each year around Thanksgiving. There may be payments from the National Association of Turkey Manufacturers. In fact, a representative of the group is here to see the president, along with two birds awaiting reprieve from the dinner table. Can a deal be made? As the president says, at one point during the evening, "Everybody wants something."

That, more or less, sets up the cleverly jumbled plot, which demands comic actors at the top of their form. The cast, which also includes Laurie Metcalf and Dylan Baker, deftly navigates its way through the thicket of laughs, nailing every one.

"November" shares a keen sense of politically incorrectness with "Romance," Mamet's last foray into farce, seen at off-Broadway's Atlantic Theater Company in 2005. In "Romance," the playwright gleefully skewered the judicial system during a madcap trial.

Here, the corruption of politics and power takes center stage. Mamet is careful not to make his chief executive resemble any specific president, although Mamet most likely would not be too upset if you found some similarities with the current occupant of the White House.

Lane has always been a master of the slow burn and then kaboom. High strung is his specialty. He gets to display a lot of outrage here. Baker, as a practical presidential assistant, offers superb support, ably setting up Lane's choicest moments of hilarity.

The plot percolates with the arrival of Smith's speechwriter (Metcalf), a lesbian who has just returned from China with a new baby and who wants to marry her partner — in the White House. Without giving away too much, let's just say deals are struck.

Smith is the ultimate manipulator, a symbol of the times, according to Mamet, willing to do a deal with anyone to get re-elected. Turkeys are not the half of it.

Director Joe Mantello keeps this merry-go-round of self-preservation moving as fast as possible on designer Scott Pask's realistic presidential set. Two supporting players, Ethan Phillips as a turkey lobbyist and Michael Nichols as an avenging Native American, jump into the fray without missing a beat.

The play ends abruptly — almost too quickly. It says something about "November" — and maybe the state of the nation — that its swift conclusion makes you yearn for a little more.

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