SOURCE: A review of The Cryptogram, in The North American Review, Vol. CCLXXIX, No. 6, November-December, 1994, p. 51.

[In the following review, King provides a negative assessment of The Cryptogram.]

In London's West End, David Mamet's Cryptogram had its world premiere. Set in Chicago in 1959, the piece centers around the anxieties of John, a ten-year-old boy. The clues in character, time and place all point to a personal allusion in the coded title—Mamet must be revealing something about himself. His director of twenty years standing, Gregory Mosher, claims not to have raised the question; after all, he says, "The pleasure of the play lies not, of course, in whether the young boy's journey was Mamet's, but in whether it is ours." The Cryptogram runs for under seventy minutes, a brief journey at best; two of the three characters deliver set speeches at a high emotional level, enough to measure...