Henry, portrait of a patsy - Rehmat Boutique

Many years ago, my late sister got a job right out of law school working for Bernie Mamet, father of former Chicago playwright David. One time, she told me, they went to court together and Bernie gave his name to the court reporter, who asked, “Any relation to David?” “Yeah, I’m his father.” “Well, I bet you taught him everything he knows.” To which Bernie replied, “I taught him everything he knows. I just didn’t teach him everything I know.”

It’s a funny story, but as I watched Mamet’s Henry Johnson, now onstage at the Biograph in a coproduction of Relentless Theatre Group and Victory Gardens Theater, I thought about how that little anecdote contains the seeds of most of Mamet’s worldview—namely that life is largely a quest for status and dominance, often revolving around bits of information parceled out to the underdog to bolster the needs (financial, psychological, or both) of the top dog. From his 1984 Pulitzer-winning Glengarry Glen Ross (just revived on Broadway with a bushel of stars in the cast) to films like 1997’s The Spanish Prisoner, Mamet’s long been a stalwart chronicler of the takers and the taken in society.

Henry Johnson
Through 5/4: Wed–Fri 7 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; no shows 4/18-4/20; Victory Gardens Theater, 2443 N. Lincoln, victorygardens.org, $64-$69

First produced in 2023 in Venice, California, and soon to be released as a film featuring Shia LaBeouf (who starred in that premiere), Henry Johnson focuses on the title character—a hapless patsy who goes to jail for trying to help a college “friend” out of a jam, and finds an even bigger frying pan in the person of Gene, his cellie who wastes no time at all getting into Henry’s head. “Many dream. Of a wise man, who would set them straight. Most people will fall for a line. Sweet talking promoter, swindler, thief, who’s going to sell ’em snake oil, claiming to be that man,” Gene says as soon as Henry enters their cell. (Does nobody just say “hello” anymore?)

Does Henry fall for Gene’s machinations? Does David Mamet think Donald Trump is a great president? Yes and yes. Mamet’s rightward political shift (announced in a 2008 Village Voice essay entitled “Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain Dead Liberal’” and amplified through many more recent statements in support of Trump and against “wokeism”) isn’t the direct subject matter of his latest play. But it’s interesting to think about how someone who supports Don the Con can write with such facility about the human capacity for seeing and hearing only what you want to see in another person—especially a person who obviously doesn’t give a shit about anyone except himself.

Last year before the election, the Tribune ran an editorial from Mamet about what a crime-ridden hellhole Chicago is—even though he hasn’t lived here for decades and, as Reader contributor Jeff Nichols pointed out in a response, the homicide rate in the city was much higher when Mamet first hit it big with Sexual Perversity in Chicago in 1974. (Nichols also noted that “Chicago newspapers of the past, which fostered many of the writers Mamet reveres, didn’t give a voice to every political viewpoint. They did, however, make a blood sport out of covering amoral, inept businessmen. Mike Royko called Trump ‘the National Goofball’ and ‘a wet-look loser.’”)

The production here, directed by Relentless cofounder and longtime Chicago theater stalwart Edward Torres, hasn’t been without its own controversy based on its relationship with Victory Gardens, which has largely been moribund since the board fired artistic director Ken-Matt Martin in 2022. A group of Chicago artists held a “block party” protest last Wednesday outside the Biograph as a call to “reinstate the communitywide boycott of Victory Gardens.”

But it’s unclear what there is to boycott in the long run. Reportedly, the partnership with Relentless came about in part because Dennis Začek, the former artistic director and the man who created Victory Gardens’s signature (and now-defunct) playwrights ensemble over many years, advocated for Torres, his protege. Though billed as the kickoff to Victory Gardens’s 50th anniversary, the company website still contains no information about future productions. Nor does it list any staff or the current board members as of this writing, which is highly unusual, to say the least. (Maybe they’ve decided not to tell us everything they know. Or maybe they just don’t know.)

So, OK, if one can put aside the politics of its creator and the venue’s recent history, is this a show worth seeing? If you like Mamet, sure. It’s stronger than anything he’s created in some time. But that’s not saying a lot given his literary output in recent years, aside from his political essays, has barely caused a ripple; none of his work since 2009’s Race (produced in 2012 at the Goodman) has made it back to his hometown. Henry Johnson contains echoes of earlier Mamet works, notably 1982’s Edmond, which features another white-collar guy who goes to prison after dallying with the underworld. And like Ricky Roma in Glengarry, Gene is a guy who loves to talk people into something through discursive pseudo-philosophical pontifications about Snow White and Christ and politicians that all add up to the same thing: telling Henry that Gene is the face-eating leopard in this world.

The story, presented in four stark scenes with an intermission that mostly seems inserted to rearrange some set pieces (the changeovers between scenes generally feel a little awkward), has a pleasing and familiar Mametian rhythm. The performances are strong and fun to watch, and though Thomas Gibson (formerly of television’s Criminal Minds and Dharma & Greg) gets star billing as Gene and brings appropriate mind-fucking menace to the part, I was mostly pleased to see Chicago’s Keith Kupferer, who plays a prison guard, back onstage after his rightly lauded turn in the film Ghostlight, and the splendid Al’Jaleel McGhee, who plays Henry’s alpha-male boss, Mr. Barnes, in the first scene. Kupferer and McGhee both excel as men who seem to operate on a higher moral code than Henry but are no less likely to have their own agendas.

But if you get beneath the facile swathes of dialogue, there’s not a lot new here. And more importantly, I don’t think there’s a lot that’s actually challenging anyone’s worldview, least of all Mamet’s. The story depends on our willingness to believe that Henry (played with guileless desperation by Daniil Krimer) will fall for anything, anywhere, anytime, as long as someone is dangling something he wants, most of all status. It’s a zero-sum, nihilistic view of the world that maybe fits well with the MAGA notion that one can only succeed by tearing down and eliminating others. But it’s also, to put it charitably, bullshit.

Not everyone falls for the con. Not everyone is so desperate for the approval of seemingly powerful men (well, lots of other people who want to be powerful are, I guess) that they toss aside common sense and self-preservation, ignoring all the neon-bright warnings about the con men along the way. And if you’re going into Henry Johnson for insight into why the title character falls for it over and over, you may as well ask hardcore Trumpers why they still support the man. They do because they do. Because it’s who they are.

So while there is great skill on display here in the crafting of the story, there is a hollowness at its heart, as if Mamet were still trying to convince us that he knows a mark when he sees one. I’m not against bleakness in theater, god knows (I’m on record as loving Brett Neveu’s Eric LaRue, also turned into a film, which offers no easy answers for why isolation and violence are so often hallmarks of American life). But Henry Johnson ultimately feels like a retread of Mamet’s favorite themes. He’s telling us what he knows. But we’ve heard it all before.