Uncivil union Boston Marriage weds Mamet to Wilde
	Boston Marriage By David Mamet. Directed by Charles Towers. Set and costumes by Bill Clarke. Lighting by John Ambrosone. Sound by Jeff Jones. Original music by Edgar Cyrus. With Judith Lightfoot Clarke, Helen McElwain, and Seana McKenna. At Merrimack Repertory Theatre through March 7.

In Boston Marriage, David Mamet strikes up an open union with Oscar Wilde that allows him to canoodle freely with Henry James, Noël Coward, and Edward Albee — not to mention pleasure himself. The uncharacteristic work, an epigrammatic love duel carried out by a fin de siècle lesbian couple coming apart at the beautifully tailored seams, had its world premiere at American Repertory Theatre in 1999, but despite going on to London in 2001 and New York in 2002, it’s not been seen in these parts since. Which may not be a bad thing.

Dizzyingly affected and laden with linguistic filigree, this fluted female sibling to Glengarry Glen Ross and Speed-the-Plow is not as easy to pin down with a few macho thrusts and a general pummeling of profanity. Like the intricately articulate constructs of Wilde, it must be pulled off near-perfectly or the illusion that people might really spew such overarching bons mots goes up in smoke. The good news is that Merrimack Repertory Theatre, fielding an elegantly appointed and limber-tongued cast under the direction of Charles Towers, throws Boston Marriage a happy fifth anniversary. What makes the party a success is not so much the brittle verbal icing applied to Mamet’s layer cake of Victorian propriety, social satire, and glib, anachronistic vulgarity. It’s the true feeling allowed to show through the curlicues of artifice.

The title term, made famous by James in The Bostonians, refers to a close alliance between women of his era who chose female intimacy, whether physical or not, over conventional marriage. In Boston Marriage, there is no doubt that the liaison of Anna and Claire is — or at least was — sexual. It also proves, at the O. Henry–like end, enduring. There are those who argue that Boston Marriage is a stunt on the part of a playwright said to write poorly for women, a winking display of sheer virtuosity. But Mamet does more than create in Anna and Claire an amusing cross between The Importance of Being Earnest’s Cecily and Gwendolyn and his own cussing, craven male grapplers. Buried in the pair’s deliciously arch, aphoristic combat and conspiracy is a demonstration of the negotiation, compromise, and all-out deceit that can be part and parcel of a long-time union. "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments," writes Shakespeare. For con-art connoisseur Mamet, it’s about how craftily you dodge the impediments, all the while juggling tenderness with self-interest.

At the beginning of Boston Marriage, Claire has just returned from a "sojourn" to find Anna’s drawing room newly decorated in red, flowered chintz. It’s typical of their relationship that Anna, who abhors the fabric, has undertaken the makeover for Claire, who once — in jest — said she liked it. It’s like Tesman’s buying Hedda Gabler the house she had admired just to make conversation.

Anna is sporting an eye-popping new emerald, a gift, she says, from a male "protector" with whom she’s taken up to provide for her and her somewhat younger inamorata. "Men, what can you do with them?" wonders Claire. "Just the one thing," replies Anna, proving that male bashing can be accomplished even with one’s pinky curled abreast a teacup. But Claire has news of her own: she has fallen in love with a very young woman. What’s more, she wants Anna to help her facilitate an assignation designed to consummate her desire, that very afternoon. Recriminations — as honed and polished as period woodwork — follow, hilariously spiced with Anna’s repeated, politically incorrect assaults on the maid, into whose ethnic-cliché-ridden abuse she channels her rage at Claire. When Claire’s prey finally shows up at the off-stage door, a crisis ensues that threatens both Anna’s financial plan and Claire’s new-found lust. Far be it from me, though, to ruin the first-act curtain.

When Mamet helmed Boston Marriage for the ART, directing frequent collaborator Felicity Huffman and wife Rebecca Pidgeon, he eased up on the rhythmically jabbing zombie-ism he seems to favor in stage acting. "Do you see? Do you see?" the characters peck at one another, even in so verbally lacy a work as Boston Marriage. But the production was certainly stylized, as befits a comedy of manners, and so is this one. Nonetheless, Seana McKenna, as the quick but wounded Anna, and especially Judith Lightfoot Clarke, as a Claire palpably anguished at saying farewell to youthful ardor, get at the humanity beneath the bravura display of female callousness and Wildean wit. Which is not to say they don’t play a powerful game of oral tennis, often using as ball Helen McElwain’s heart-rendingly hilarious menial. With her uncomprehending google eyes, gangly Olive Oyl stance, and diaphragm-heaving wails, McElwain’s maid is as close as the production comes to cartoon. But she’s a cartoon you want to clip out and put up on your refrigerator.