When I saw that
John Malkovich was to appear in a brand-new David Mamet play in
the West End, there was no question that I would buy a ticket. But then the “proverbial hit the fan” when it
became obvious to whom Barney Fein (the main character) alluded. A Twitter storm ensued with supporters of the
#MeToo Movement strongly criticising the fact that a middle-aged successful man
had the temerity to write “their” story.
Whilst having a certain amount of sympathy for their argument, I wasn’t
prepared to make judgement until after seeing the production and certainly had
no intention of boycotting it.
And I’m really
glad I did go as it was quite an honour to see an actor of Malkovich’s
calibre transform himself into a monster.
And there is no doubt that Barney Fein is a monster of the highest
order. In the programme is a statement
saying that “This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead,
is entirely coincidental”. Whilst they
would say that, wouldn’t they, it would need a theatre goer who has spent many
years living in a cave not to link Fein with the film producer Harvey
Weinstein.
John Malkovich, complete with fat suit, portrays an
egotistical, bullying and extremely nasty movie mogul, with no redeeming
qualities whatsoever. As he shuffles,
walrus like, around his penthouse office (designed by Christopher Oram) sarcastically
bringing down everyone within a metre radius, we wait for a chink in his
relentless nastiness, but none appears.
His doctor (a very weirdly bearded Teddy Kempner) panders to his
every request for illegal pills for his ailing mother and pills and injections
to aid his sexual drive, whilst his P.A. (a brilliant Doon Mackichan)
although obviously disdainful of her boss, does nothing to prevent a young,
rising actress, Yung Kim Li (Ionna Kimbook) falling prey to his
molestations.
The play opens
with Fein lambasting a screenwriter, refusing to pay him his dues because the
work he’s done is “a piece of shit”. On
threatening to report the mogul to the Writers’ Guild, the response he gets is
“The Writers’ Guild would drink a beaker of my mucus if I asked them to”.
We then move
onto his lascivious nature when he arranges to meet Yung Kim Li, the young
Korean who has just arrived on a flight from her home in Kent. If you’re not repulsed by Fein’s bullying
nature, the scene with Yung Kim Li will definitely do the trick. Any laughter from Mamet’s uncompromising and
usual coruscating wit, dies during this scene in an hotel room, to be replaced
by a very uncomfortable silence as we will her to get the hell out of
there. The crude dialogue is imbued with
a little lightness when the wheedling Fein, uses a seduction technique of
promising the girl a role in a Korean Gone With The Wind or a gay version of
Anne Frank. When she doesn’t immediately
fall for his “charms”, the mogul resorts to whining that the only reason he’s
being rejected is because he is fat.
That old chestnut is also resurrected following the young girl’s
complaint to the police about his behaviour, when he laments that “the
overweight get no sympathy”.
Mamet ensures that Fein gets his just deserts
with the mogul’s career and life imploding following the police intervention,
but what is strange is the sub plot he devises concerning a Syrian with a
gun. Odd? Very.
But, despite
these reservations and the relentless hideous nature of Fein’s personality, I
am more than happy to have seen Bitter Wheat. The
cast are excellent and you can’t help but applaud John Malkovich for
agreeing to portray such an unsympathetic character and David Mamet for his
thick skin in penning one, even though this particular play is not his best work.
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