This is David Mamets first play, written in 1972, and like many first plays is a two hander (and involves a park bench). We first discover Emil, a beatnik poet and George an officer in the US military sitting on said bench, having just scattered their mothers ashes into the lake. There follow fourteen short scenes (or variations) in which they manage to discuss life death and the universe but always with reference to ducks.
If this doesnt exactly sound like a recipe for great theatre it is made to work by some extraordinary language and some fine acting from David Seddon and Mark Edwards. This must be an almost impossible script to learn and perform as tightly as these two have managed (they co-direct with Luke Parnaby). Being a first play by a young writer some of the snappy, thrusting short-line sequences feel like verbal showing off, without much content, but Seddon as The Poet and Edwards as The Officer carry them off with some kind of truth.
Emil sports a small CND badge, George is in full uniform, and so some kind of opposition is set up between the two characters visually. The play was written as the horrors of the Vietnam were being played out, and in this tranquil setting Mamet makes interesting points about the human condition, especially about loneliness: Nothing that lives can live alone.
