Mamet Undertaking

Masculinity or misogyny?

Profanity or poetry?

Insightful or inflammatory?

Actually, "provocateur" should cover it.

From the incendiary sexual-harassment politics of "Oleanna" through the expletive-soaked, testosterone-fueled dialogue of competitive real-estate agents in "Glengarry Glen Ross" to the powerful verbal punches thrown over art and commerce in "Speed-the-Plow," David Mamet's material often is the theatrical equivalent of a lit match rushing toward a gas spill.

"It's a dream of mine to direct all of Mamet's plays because I am a woman," says Ruth Pe Palileo, who for now settles for helming "The Shawl." Mamet's 1985 study of a swindling mystic attempting to con his bereaved customer -- and discovering he might actually be more of a real seer than a fake scammer -- opens tonight for a two-weekend run at Las Vegas Little Theatre's Fischer Black Box Theatre.

"The signature Mamet thing is that he's sometimes accused of being a misogynist, but I love Mamet's language and his pacing, and I dislike it when people believe that delivering it rapid-fire is being Mamet-like. When he writes, he likes the sound of the words, as much as the pace."

An intimate drama, "The Shawl" remains faithful to Mamet's style, but smaller in scale. "There are certain similarities with Mamet and Quentin Tarantino, the way they get tagged by people," Pe Palileo says. "Aggression does come into this in that there's the same sort of standoff, but I think it's even better Mamet because it's stripping it to the bone."

Addressing one of Mamet's favored themes -- tricks and cons (as in his films, "House of Games," "The Spanish Prisoner," "Heist" and "Wag the Dog") -- "The Shawl" is a three-character piece. John, a charlatan clairvoyant to all outward appearances, accepts as a client a woman known simply as "Miss A," seeking advice on whether she should contest her recently deceased mother's will. In what amounts to a magician spilling his secrets, John tells his greedy gay lover, Charles, how to gain Miss A's trust and learn her background. But when Charles insists John arrange a bogus seance with this mark to wheedle her out of the inheritance money, questions arise as to whether John's merely a two-bit grifter or a gifted visionary.

"It's about who's really in control and who looks like they're in control and those are rarely the same," says Brandon McClenahan, who plays John. "It's a mental chess game, a mystery, and even at the end, there's a question that you have to answer for yourself."

That element of doubt for both the characters and theatergoers underscores "The Shawl," which also alludes to a flimflammer's reliance on a victim's psychological need to be deceived. "I see this play like Penn and Teller's three-balls-in-a-cup trick," Pe Palileo says.

Beneath the plot, both she and McClenahan detect an analogy Mamet draws between the chicanery attempted by the characters in "The Shawl" and the tacit pact audiences make with actors to accept the illusions created onstage.

"It is also a play about acting," Pe Palileo says. "There's this great scene where John reveals things to Charles, and now you've been shown the trick, but part of you still wants to be in the audience. It's like he's a performer onstage, doing shows for an audience of one."

Grateful for his first foray into Mamet territory, McClenahan says he's savoring lines -- terse, clever, fast-paced -- so distinctive they've earned the shorthand of Mamet-speak. "It's got that touch to it, like a modern man's Shakespeare," McClenahan says. "He writes in a way that's easy for me to get into, this very cerebral, mentalist kind of way. It is so easy to write somebody who is verbose and make them sound like they want to sound intelligent. He brings truly intellectual dialogue out in a very realistic way, paced in a way that's just unparalleled in my experience. I love it. I've just been rolling around in it."

Light that match. Mamet's always a gas.

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.