Truth and consequences

A conversation with Oskar Eustis

by Bill Rodriguez

FATHERS AND SONS, sons and fathers. What a cycle. There are so many opportunities for disappointment and rejection, misunderstanding and rage, as the next generation studies, overtly and subliminally, what it is to be and become a man. Dramatic conflict doesn't come more fraught. That relationship is at the heart of David Mamet's The Cryptogram, first produced in 1994 and arguably his best play. Out of similar dark fascination, Trinity Repertory Company artistic director Oskar Eustis is currently directing it.

Mamet was about the age of the boy in The Cryptogram when his parents' marriage came apart. His subsequently absent father, and a stepfather who was repeatedly brutal to Mamet's sister, proved dubious role models. As for Eustis relating to the play's theme, he has spoken in interviews about his father not being there for his family. Although his father was sober for his last 20 years, to the day, alcoholism led the man, a prominent Minnesota political leader, to a nervous breakdown the day of confirmation hearings for his appointment as chief counsel to the Small Business Administration.

I recently spoke with Eustis about the production. Here are some excerpts.

Q: The poster for the production is unusual: just you as a boy atop your father's shoulders. You're taking this play personally.

A: It's a play one of whose major figures never appears on stage. The play is about, in many ways, the consequences of his absent father. That's something that I relate to very powerfully. There's a lot of my personal history that relates to not having my father there.

The play has had a somewhat forbidding reputation and reception. And I feel that somehow in previous productions that has not become completely clear to the audience, and as such it's hard for people to connect or to understand what's powerful about it. So I'm hoping that we can do that in this production, and the poster helps to do that. Separate from that it's me, it's the kind of image that is precisely what's missing from the play.

Q: Mark Rucker's production at Yale Rep in 1996 was the first time you saw The Cryptogram, which you weren't impressed by on the page. What had you not seen in it when you'd read the play?

A: There's a formality to the way that Mamet has approached dialogue in this that is, I think for most people, maddening on the page. Many people have responded to it that way on the stage. They find it so mannered and so artificial in its construction, so tightly wound and limited in its means of expression, that it doesn't seem that the heart of it is there. And that was certainly my response as well when I read it. I appreciated it, but I was not moved by it at all. And when I saw Mark's production I realized for the first time what a great heart was beating in this play. I realized what a special achievement Mamet had done. Partly I, and I think many other people, are misdirected by Mamet's previous work. This is not like his other plays, and we sort of read it as though it's a Mamet play. When you spend time with it you realize that it's got some of the surface things -- the repetitive dialogue, the short sentences, the overlapping concerns -- that seem to be sort of external signatures of Mamet. But the real heart of it is really different. Because for the first time he's not really interested in these rapacious men. He's interested in the consequences of these rapacious men . . . I remain in awe of Mamet's ability to check his focus at this stage of his career.

The other thing that's so powerful about this as a play for me -- and again I didn't really understand this on the page -- is that I think it's really about, in some way, understanding how betrayal is passed on and infectious. Donny is betrayed by Robert. Donny then betrays her kid and the love and trust that her kid has in her, who then is going to go on to a life of betraying.

Q: And that has to be recognized by the audience rather than accused by the playwright.

A: Exactly. I know this sounds hyperbolic, but I really do find myself thinking about [Eugene O'Neill's autobiographical dysfunctional family play A Long Day's Journey Into Night] all the time working on this piece, because it feels so much to me like this is, in addition to whatever else it is, an act of forgiveness that Mamet is writing for his mother.

What seems to me so great-hearted about it is that he does he does not whitewash or sentimentalize or exonerate this woman's behavior, and yet he does understand it. He does suggest that it is possible to understand where it comes from, and by understanding it, forgive it, implicitly. As O'Neill said about Long Day's Journey, it is an act of forgiveness for those poor, haunted Tyrones.

Q: In rehearsal is it much more time-consuming to get Mamet's hyper-realistic dialogue to flow naturally than with Shakespeare, say?

A: The biggest surprise for me has been that this has been, without exception, the most difficult text for actors to memorize than I've ever worked on. I just think, "Thank God I've got two real pros at the height of their game in Annie and Brian." It's been staggeringly difficult. As they say, essentially what they had to do is to memorize the whole play. Because it's absolutely impossible to simply memorize your lines and cues and make any sense out of it. You have to memorize every word.

Q: It's a fugue. They have to know precisely when to come in with their own instrument.

A: That's right. And that's just the groundwork. That's before you start to make choices about the performance.

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