A war of words in Mamet's 'Marriage'

By John Fleming, Times Performing Arts Critic
Published February 21, 2008

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Playwright David Mamet is a famously macho writer in the Hemingway tradition, and The Boston Marriage is his only all-woman drama. Premiered in 1999, it is "a comedy of manners about two ladies of fashion at the turn of the century, and their maid," according to Mamet. The title is Victorian slang for a lesbian couple living together.

As with most every Mamet play, a principal theme is language. "The play . . . records sexual and linguistic warfare as the register of language radically alternates between high and low, a post-Jamesean world of formal locutions and semimodern street talk that often makes fun of itself through contemporary expressions and Wildean echoes," writes Ira Nadel in his new biography David Mamet: A Life in the Theatre (Palgrave).

Katrina Stevenson, Alison Burns and Emilia Sargent star in the Jobsite production of The Boston Marriage, directed by Karla Hartley. It opens tonight and runs through March 9 at Shimberg Playhouse of Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. $24.50. (813) 229-7827.