Catastrophe

A rather pedestrian version of Beckett's anti-totalitarianism play that seems to be missing the point.

A very short but kind of interesting play that seems not just to satirise totalitarianism but to suggest that fascism is somehow all about staging a kind of theatre. Mamet adjusts the material a little, making it slightly less about emphasising a final moment of defiance: no doubt this change of tone away from heroic resistance will displease some viewers, but it seems defensible. Gielgud's last performance (in his mid-nineties).