Vile: Bitter Wheat at the Garrick Theatre
Bitter Wheat
Garrick Theatre
Grand Circle B1, £25
14 August 2019
Play site
It was within my power to know I would hate Bitter Wheat. In a way it is refreshing to see something that seems to have no redeeming qualities. But primarily it is profoundly unenjoyable.
I knew nothing of Bitter Wheat’s writer and director David Mamet beyond his being the guy behind Glengarry Glen Ross, which I think is a strong play and film. Bitter Wheat tells me that his muse belongs in the 80s. What is so offensive about this play is Mamet’s apparent desire both to capitalise on the Me Too movement and to undermine it. He takes as his subject sexual abuse predicated on vile power dynamics within the creative industries, and what he seems to have to say about it is that you can’t hold a good mogul down. This may, sadly, be true – but surely it is not something to be celebrated and enjoyed. Oh those mischievous misogynists and their japes!
John Malkovich is Mamet’s perfect partner in crime. His ego is slathered across the stage like the slimy excretion of a monstrous slug, smothering his co-stars with its sticky ooze, raising a noxious odour that can’t be escaped even if you close your eyes and think of England. Throughout I tried to question myself: how intentional is the awfulness, and if it’s intentional does it make sense? But the ultimately flimsiness of the play, its vacuous lack of point, its toothless, gummy, sucking bitelessness, convinces me that Bitter Wheat is nothing but a power trip for Mamet and Malkovich. Rehearsals must have been a nightmare.
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