Bitter Wheat, David Mamet’s latest play, features a loathsome Hollywood hotshot, Barney Fein, who offers to turn an actress into a superstar provided she lets him rape her. The show’s gruesome storyline has flashes of bitter comedy. Fein boasts that the Writers Guild of America would ‘drink a beaker of my mucus’ if he forced them to. Although this is the ultimate #MeToo play it can’t prevent itself from taking a masculine point of view. Fein’s assistant, Sondra (Doon Mackichan), conveniently vanishes at the right moment and leaves the starlet at the monster’s mercy. But was Sondra complicit? We aren’t told.
And we learn nothing about her attitude to her boss. Nor do we hear enough about the victim (newcomer Ioanna Kimbook), who lacks even the simplest tactic to deter a sex pest (‘I’m going to be sick’). A female writer would have given her more guile and more emotional armour. Mamet is content to portray her as a tethered lamb while he focuses on fleshing out the wolf.
Some of Fein’s quirks are unnecessary and contradictory. He’s an old-school racist even though he supports a charity for migrants. He hates the films that have made him rich (every one of them?) and he heaps abuse on the fans whose custom he lives off. He’s repulsively fat and he uses his gluttony as a bargaining counter, arguing that his victim owes him sex because he eats too much. But John Malkovich (superbly creepy) has a gaunt face and a lean jaw line which don’t suggest obesity. And the beach ball he shoves under his shirt won’t fool anyone.
In Act Two we get an avalanche of plot details. Fein’s mother is dead. She was murdered.
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