CRITIC’S CHOICE

 

David Mamet reportedly took 15 years to finish this excruciating semiautobiographical play, which depicts the relentless, irreversible abandonment of a ten-year-old, John, by his errant father and traumatized mother.  In the demanding central role, 14-year-old Jack Donahue delivers a meticulous intensity it becomes almost too painful to watch.  The adult actors in this Journeymen production – Shannon O’Neill as John’s beleaguered mother and Daniel E. Brennan as her morally bankrupt childhood friend, Del – need the better part of a half hour in the play’s tricky first scene to reach Donahue’s level of intensity. Once they do, Frank Pullen’s focused production packs a debilitating wallop.