First impressions can, of course, be deceiving, but mine of 65-year-old David Mamet's play "The Cryptogram," whose world premiere was at the Ambassadors Theatre in London in 1994, was simply how unhelpful and knotty a work it was.
In light of its title, perhaps that was to be expected of this piece by the renowned American playwright, author, screenwriter (notably of 2001's smash hit, "Hannibal," starring Anthony Hopkins) and film director whose 1988 Tony-nominated "Speed-the-Plow," a bitingly satire of the U.S. movie business, was enigmatically dubbed by some as a "tone poem."
Built around just three characters — the mother, named Donny (Narumi Yasuda), Del (Shosuke Tanihara), an old boyfriend of hers, and her son John (played by both Waku Sakaguchi and Eru Yamada) — this family drama involves them talking in virtual riddles about their life stories and their insights in what amounted to streams of verbal fragments.