The Old Neighborhood

The Old Neighborhood collects three tightly knit playlets in a quilt of remembered experience, as the characters, in middle age, revisit the stresses and strains of childhood. Mamet is clearly drawing on autobiographical sources in these plays, set in his old stomping grounds in and around Chicago, but his artistry is never merely biography. His genious for colloquial dialogue is abundantly clear as two old friends from a Jewish neighborhood reminisce about their childhood and the fate of their friends and neighbors; as a brother and sister painfully revisit their childhood; and as a sister’s wracked marriage and impending divorce is foreshadowed in their painful memories. A.R.T. audiences who remember Mamet’s The Cryptogram will recognize the same astute search for deep patterns in the rembered past.

SYNOPSIS

After an absence of many years, Bobby Gould returns to his hometown of Chicago. As his marriage flounders, he hopes to reconnect with his past to regain a sense of plychological equilibrium.

In The Disappearance of the Jews he reminisces with one of his best buddies from high school, but they argue over exactly what happened during their adolescent escapades. Struggling with the issue of monogamy, both men relish their early sexual encounters.

In Jolly Bobby and his sister discuss the traumatic experience of their parents’ divorce and the subsequent psychological problems they suffered. The anger they felt then explodes, but Jolly claims he has broken the cycle of emotional abuse.

In D. Bobby visits the first girl he loved, whom he left to seek happiness elsewhere. Like the other characters in the play, she, too, has struggled against a sense of bitterness and futility. But in her subtext, she suggests the possibility of growth and renewal.