Friday, June 21, 2019

David Mamet’s Disappointing Harvey Weinstein Play

Eyebrows were instantly raised when David Mametrevealed in early 2018 that he was writing a play inspired by Harvey Weinstein, just months after the former Weinstein Company chief was exiled from Hollywood following an ever-snowballing series of sexual-misconduct and assault accusations. (Weinstein, soon to be on trial for rape in New York, has denied all allegations of nonconsensual sex.) More than a year later, that play has finally opened on London’s West End—and according to contributor Ben Croll, there’s not much there worth writing home about. “On paper, the piece operates as a calculated provocation—reframing the #MeToo narrative from the abuser’s own perspective, and doing so with a jagged comic tone,” he writes. “In practice, however, such a conceit can only fall flat when, as becomes clear over the course of the show, its author doesn’t fully understand the story he’s trying to tell, or the discourse he’s trying to inflame. Bitter Wheat thus comes across as an impudent shrug of a play, a work designed to court scandal whose most shocking quality is its laziness.”

Elsewhere in HWD, Julie Miller goes deep with Kieran Culkin about his scene-stealing Succession character; contributor Marc Freeman gets the inside story on Hulu’s upcoming Veronica Mars revival; and Yohana Destachats with Joey King about The Act, and gives a handy rundown of what you may want to remember before The Hills returns on MTV next week.