In its first appearance since its Los Angeles premiere two years ago, the production of David Mamet’s Henry Johnson at Victory Gardens is the most entertaining cry of “Wake up, sheeple!” you’ll ever see onstage. For 80 minutes (plus an intermission) crackling exchanges that bristle with menace light up the minimalist set, a reminder of just how masterful the playwright is with dialogue when he’s in the groove. And boy is this a deep cut.
You’ve heard the saying, or some variation: If you look around the poker table and don’t see the mark, it’s you. That’s this play in a very hard, almost calcified nutshell. The titular sad sack, Henry Johnson, is a rube, a mark, a patsy, and everyone knows it, from the college acquaintance who reaches out for help when he gets into deep legal trouble, to the boss (a prosecutorial Al’Jaleel McGhee) who discovers how far Henry’s gone to help said acquaintance, to the cell mate at the prison he’s sentenced to, to the prison guard with whom he finds himself in dutch. They can all smell how weak, naive and needy he is, and they waste no time exploiting his unmanly softness to take whatever they can get.
Save for one reveal in the opening scene, there’s nary a twist in sight. As Henry fails time and again to learn from his rough experiences at the hands of his exploiters–even those who tell him to his face he’s ripe for the picking–everything you think is coming, well, here it comes like clockwork. Henry’s the Gingerbread Man and everyone else is the fox.
Thomas Gibson, clearly relishing the opportunity to play one of Mamet’s patented sociopaths, delivers the thesis statement to Henry one day in their cell as he fattens him for the inevitable slaughter: “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.” Ricky Roma, please call your office.
Daniil Krimer does a good job of slowly revealing how much of a loser Henry is, offering up an increasingly punchable face as the scenes progress. And Keith Kupferer gives the play an old-school Chicago Mamet feel with his rope-a-dope portrayal of a prison guard lulling Henry into believing he means him no harm, that somehow they’re all in this together.
I absolutely love Mamet’s best work without apology: American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross and House of Games, to name but a few. I don’t share his increasingly reactionary politics, but I do agree with many of the dark truths he shares about human nature that regrettably led him down that path.
Henry Johnson doesn’t hit the sustained highs of those plays, but it’s very, very good and highly entertaining. It’s a rare treat even as it treads familiar ground, like Noah Wyle doing a variation of his ER persona in The Pitt or John Hamm recapturing some of that Don Draper magic in Your Friends & Neighbors. You can watch any of these with a new generation and say, See, kids! That’s why I love this guy.
Mamet’s a writer’s writer, muscular, bold, and both subtle and showy as needed. Henry Johnson is another exploration of one of his life’s great themes, perhaps presenting a closing argument he knows he’s already won. If you benefit from the message, he could be saying, all the better. And if you reject it? Well, why don’t you shuffle up the cards and deal him into a friendly game?
The Victory Gardens and Relentless Theatre Group production of Henry Johnson runs through May 4 at Victory Gardens Theater.
For a full roundup of reviews of this show, visit Theatre in Chicago.
Photo by Michael Brosilow
