David Mamet's new Oval Office satire depicts one day in the life of a beleaguered American commander-in-chief. It's November in a Presidential election year, and incumbent Charles Smith's chances for reelection are looking grim. Approval ratings are down, his money's running out, and nuclear war might be imminent. Though his staff has thrown in the towel and his wife has begun to prepare for her post-White House life, Chuck isn't ready to give up just yet. Amidst the biggest fight of his political career, the President has to find time to pardon a couple of turkeys — saving them from the slaughter before Thanksgiving — and this simple PR event inspires Smith to risk it all in attempt to win back public support. With Mamet's characteristic no-holds-barred style, November is a scathingly hilarious take on the state of America today and the lengths to which people will go to win.
"This is satire with a scorpion's sting" - Variety
"A professional skeptic and an inspired word jockey, David Mamet can lay claim to the same connoisseurship of human folly as H. L. Mencken, who once observed that, in America, 'only the man who was born with a petrified diaphragm can fail to laugh himself to sleep every night.' Mamet's new Oval Office satire, November... is a hilarious demonstration of the fact that we live in an age of equality: all classes are criminal... Broadway comedy is generally a testament to Twain's maxim that honesty is 'the best of all the lost arts.' On the boulevard, laughter is meant to distract, not galvanize, to enchant, not disenchant. Into this weak hand, David Mamet has dealt an ace." - John Lahr, The New Yorker
"Ferociously original... and crisply performed, [November] rollicks from one politically incorrect punch line to the next." – San Francisco Chronicle
"Savage merriment... delightful... wild... brilliant" – San Francisco Examiner
"Vaudeville meets current events... David Mamet just couldn't resist the bully pulpit of satire." – San Jose Mercury News
"Very funny" – The Sacramento Bee
"Remarkable... one of the most profoundly laugh-out-loud plays that I have seen in many years." – BeyondChron.org
"The big, explosive laughter that starts early in David Mamet's November is of a kind I haven't heard in decades." – The Village Voice
"November gets my vote! Like an expert marksman in a shooting gallery, the playwright takes aim at just about every hot-button issue of the day, scoring a bull's eye every time." –Backstage East
"A hilarious, timely, decidedly un-Mamet-like laughfest" – Hollywood Reporte "Sublime! One of the first breezy and intelligent comedies of substance we've seen in a long time" – The Villager
"Extremely funny" – The New York Times
NOVEMBER was first presented at the Barrymore Theater in New York City on January 17, 2008. It was directed by Joe Mantello.
