SOURCE: "Codehearted," in The Village Voice, Vol. XL, No. 17, April 25, 1995, p. 97.

[Feingold is an American critic and educator. In the following, he offers a favorable review of The Cryptogram.]

"Auch kleine Dinge können teuer sein," runs Wolf's bestloved song, "Even little things can be precious to us." David Mamet's The Cryptogram is made up of little things—memories, household objects, verbal slips—that are precious as clues to the explanation of a childhood trauma. Magnified by it, they become objects of both veneration and horror, things that are not so much cherished as burned into the awareness.

The central figure is a child, but the action is conducted in rigidly adult terms, a puzzle that a child can only decipher in retrospect. It feels like a deep-buried memory of the playwright's own, striking with a force at once more personal and more profound than his other works...