The Cryptogram

Published Wednesday 18 October 2006 at 17:05 by Aleks Sierz

Poor little John. He can’t sleep at night. He hears voices. He’s tense. Downstairs, his Mum, Donny and family friend Del talk about John’s father, Robert. He’s due to return later on and next day plans to take his young son fishing in the woods. But nothing in David Mamet’s 1994 play is quite as it appears.

Josie Rourke’s sleek revival is faithful to the playwright’s emphatic, elliptical and mannered style, which - true to its title - offers three puzzling scenes, each of which ends on a neat twist. Despite its brevity, the play offers a highly emotional picture of a fifties childhood and shows how constant talk can sometimes mask the truth.

Sex and the City veteran Kim Cattrall is perfectly cast as the fifties Mom who stumbles from naive unawareness into shocked desperation before emerging as an angry truth-teller. By contrast, Douglas Henshall is less convincing as one of Mamet’s bruised males, all nervous tension and guilty glances.

Of the three youngsters, Oliver Coopersmith, who played John on the press night, gave a fine account of vulnerability and neediness. Every time he ascended designer Peter McKintosh’s interminably long staircase to his bedroom, it felt like he was abandoning the homely living room for the unseen terrors of the night.

Mamet’s focus on the child allows him to explore not only the roots of psychological damage but also the way that adult conflicts are imposed on young minds. With its perverse joy in verbal power games, the result is a stomach-clenching gem.