A defining theme of the plays of David Mamet, from “American Buffalo” to “Edmund” to “Race,” is an individual’s search for a moral center in a wholly transactional world. “Henry Johnson,” his fascinating 2023 work now in its Chicago premiere at the reopened Biograph Theatre from the gutsy director Eddie Torres, makes that quest as raw and explicit as anything he’s previously written.
Watching this 85-minute drama, the very production of which by the long-dormant Victory Gardens Theater (in collaboration with the new Relentless Theatre Group) was enough to cause protests on the first night of previews, my mind kept going to what makes Mamet such an outlier now in the American theater.
Some would argue that the theater is no place for an outspokenly conservative writer of political essays, but liberal-thinking persons have to dismiss that argument, if only on the grounds that there should at least be room for one. Others focus more on the content of his plays, angry at what they have to say.
But what is that, actually?
You can find a clue in the second scene of “Henry Johnson,” wherein one veteran prisoner, Gene (played by Thomas Gibson) talks to the titular character (played by Daniil Krimer), now also an incarcerated man in a shared cell. “Life everywhere is a jungle,” he says. “Difference is, out there, there are those too ignorant to know it.”
In other words, as in “Edmund,” the title character here, a likable man who gets entrapped by the legal system, is on a fool’s errand as his belief that the world can be something other than transactional is progressively shattered in four scenes. In the end, the veteran criminal turns out to be right: “Some get rich, some get caught, and sent away to dissuade the others from figuring it out. You want someone to ‘explain it to you?’ Here’s the wisdom: everything is what it seems. All the cards are in the deck. It just depends on where you cut ’em.”
Or, a bit later in the play, a conversation between Henry Johnson and the prison guard Jerry (Keith Kupferer) puts it slightly differently.
“What should I do?,” Johnson asks.
“Do what you want,” Jerry replies. “People generally do.”
“Henry Johnson” was first seen in Los Angeles in 2023 and also is about to be released as a film with Shia LaBeouf. The movie is advertised in the lobby for the current Broadway revival of Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross,” an uneasy production when it comes to the application of the themes above, all of which are applicable to that play, too.
This seat-of-its-pants Chicago production was, on the early night I was there, afflicted with some severe production management problems when it came to light and sound cues and the like. Gibson, in particular, was far from fully ready. But the skilled Kupferer was already excellent, as was Al’Jaleel McGhee, who we see as Henry’s boss in the first scene. And Krimer’s central performance is strikingly moving, which is never easy in a Mamet play and especially not in this one. The guy takes what could be an ice-cold show and gives it some heart.
I think the difference between me and Mamet’s many detractors now is not so much disagreement over the theme. Indeed, it is Mamet’s apparent amorality and dogged refusal to ascribe moral worth to anyone that so infuriates people invested in the foundational idea of theater making the world better — a laudable goal — rather than exposing human narcissism and well-cloaked hypocrisy. It’s more that I see Mamet’s seeming cynicism, if that’s the word, as part not just of a search for meaning, but actually for love.
Anyone who recalls “The Cryptogram” at Steppenwolf should know what I mean. I don’t want to imply the man is being disingenuous when he makes public utterances, just that they should not always be taken on their face.
Suffice to say that if the man’s writing all these years interests you, “Henry Johnson” is well worth seeing and there likely will be tickets at the door. Otherwise, you surely already know to stay away.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
Review: “Henry Johnson” (3 stars)
When: Through May 4
Where: Victory Gardens Biograph, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave.
Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes
Tickets: $64-$69 at victorygardens.org
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