Boston Marriage (Vintage Original)
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Boston Marriage (Vintage Original) Details
One of America's most provocative dramatists conquers new territory with this droll comedy of errors set in a Victorian drawing room.Anna and Claire are two bantering, scheming "women of fashion" who live together on the fringes of society. Anna has just become the mistress of a wealthy man, from whom she has received an enormous emerald. Claire, meanwhile, is infatuated with a young girl and wants to enlist the jealous Anna's help for an assignation. As the two women exchange barbs and taunt their hapless maid, Claire's inamorata arrives and sets off a crisis that puts both the valuable emerald and the women's future at risk. Mamet brings his trademark tart dialogue and impeccable plotting, spiced with Wildean wit, to this wickedly funny comedy.
Reviews
This is a terrific Mamet piece, full of wit, charm, intelligent banter and social recognition weaved through characters whose casual cruelty and social awareness unite Victorian era sensibilities and the present "common-place" homosexual relationship.A "Boston Marriage" may be a sexual or asexual partnership. In this case the love between Anna and Claire is combative, antagonistic and with the support of their Scotch maid Catherine, very funny and idiosyncratic. As if on an island of their own pleasure they claw and repost and debate their place in fashionable society. Anna has become a mistress and recieved a jewel and bank to satisfy. Meanwhile Claire has fallen for a younger woman, whom she enlists Anna into helping seduce.Without revealing specific details of the story, they are enmeshed in a drama of drawing room proportions, in an era where hushed gossip was as deadly as candid pictures, and social standing in the eyes of the upper class meant...something.I love Mamet. He constantly mesmerizes both viscerally and intellectually. He is a brilliant writer-here the language flows beatifully within the era's style, while retaining the patent he has on clipped, enigmatic and fluid dialogue, he is a seemingly infinite creative and theatrical artist. As a foray into a feminine world he has presented here a historical piece that is funny, able to unite eras a century apart, and ultimately lovely...