The Cryptogram - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0413693708 ISBN 13: 9780413693709

Publisher: Methuen Publishing Ltd

Synopsis

"I suspect that in time, The Cryptogram will take its place among Mamet's major works" John Lahr "Mamet's play suggests that deception is an endless spiralling process that eventually corrodes the soul. But it also harps on a theme that runs right throughout Mamet's work: the notion that we use words as a destructive social camouflage to lie to others and ourselves...And here through all the repetitions, half sentences and echoing encounter of one question with another, you feel the characters devalue experience through their use of language. As Del cries in desperation at the end, 'If we could speak the truth for one instant, then we would be free.' Mamet's point is that we are held spiritually captive by our bluster and evasions." (Michael Billington, The Guardian)"Dense with thought, feeling and hard psychological insight...There is no spare flesh on this text: words, objects, images interlock in mutual dependence which is both natural and superbly contrived." (John Peter Sunday Times)

About this title

From the Back Cover:

In this gripping short play, David Mamet combines mercurial intelligence with genuinely Hitchcockian menace. The Cryptogram is a journey back into childhood and the moment of its vanishing - the moment when the sheltering world is suddenly revealed as a place full of danger. On a night in 1959 a boy is waiting to go on a camping trip with his father. His mother wants him to go to sleep. A family friend is trying to entertain them - or perhaps distract them. Because in the dark corners of this domestic scene, there are rustlings that none of the players want to hear. And out of things as innocuous as a shattered teapot and a ripped blanket, Mamet re-creates a child's terrifying discovery that the grownups are speaking in code, and that that code may never be breakable.

From the Inside Flap:

In this gripping family tragedy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Glengarry Glen Ross endows ordinary language with Hitchcockian menace and Kafkaesque powers of disorientation. This intriguing play is a journey back into childhood and the moment of its vanishing--the moment when the sheltering world is suddenly revealed as a place full of dangers.

About this edition

• Publisher: Methuen Publishing Ltd
• ISBN 10: 0413693708
• ISBN 13: 9780413693709
• Binding: Paperback