Is It Real, or Is It Memorex?

Mastergate

By Larry Gelbart

American Repertory Theater

While watching Larrv Gelbart's production Mastergate at the American Repertory Theater (ART), the one question that might creep into one's head is "is this live or is this Memorex?" Gelbart's satire, based on the 1987 Iran-Contra hearings, has replicated the images of the Congressional investigation so closely that one feels as if he has walked into a time warp.

As in the case of the Iran-Contra affair, the fictitious Mastergate scandal takes on the air of the surreal. Like Contragate, Mastergate is based on the diversion of government funds. Through the wiles of CIA Director Wiley Slaughter (Alvin Epstein)--a thinly disguised lampoon of former real-life CIA Director William Casey--$800 million in government funds is diverted to produce a Hollywood epic. "Tet Offensive"--the film which was based on the book, "Tet Offensive," which was further based on the real-life Vietnam war attack--was to be shot in Central America. Only this time the target, that is the target in the film, was to be the Communist occupied Central American nation of Ambigua.

By virtue of its subject matter Mastergate cannot help but be funny. The televised Iran-Contra hearings gave us a glimpse, and a nauseating one at that, of the theater of politics. And Gelbart, the creator of the long-lived MASH television series, has no trouble at making the macabre laughable.

Then again, Gelbart received a great deal of help. He based much of his script on transcripts from the Iran-Contra hearings and from Watergate events. The transcripts, of course, might be considered funny in themselves. But Gelbart amplifies the circuitous and consistently evasive discourse of today's politicians by writing in what he calls "half-speak," a play on Orwell's double-speak. A perfect example of half-speak comes when key witness Steward Butler (Harry S. Murphy) says (or rather, doesn't say), "I can only reiterate what I've repeated before."

The congressional committee investigation in Mastergate has artfully captured the "whodunit" appeal of the real-life Iran-contra hearings. Set Designer Phillip Jung has fashioned the ART into a virtual facsimile of the congressional chambers. Chandeliers, oak tables, and even the ubiquitous scurrying page serve to paint a faithful picture of reality. To add to the reality or rather, surreality of the committee hearings, a network news investigation is conducted via closed circuit television throughout the play. Five television screens have been hoisted above the different seating sections to effect the play-like hearings, or rather, the hearing-like play.

Reality is painted so faithfully and humorously in Mastergate that one begins to wish the hearings had been this way in real life. We are told that the actor Joseph Daly is playing Vice President Burden. But when he delivers lines, or rather Bushisms, like, "Major Battle helped lead his men in the attack in the mud at Pearl Harbor," we cannot help but wish our own administration were so eloquently incompetent. Actor Daniel von Bargen portrays Major Manley Battle, whose lines like "standing orders prevent me from flying on anything but a stealth bomber," even outdo the real-life performance of Lt. Col. Oliver North.

The cast's simulation of a simulation is excellent. Not only have the actors mastered their character to virtual perfection, but they have, believe it or not, made them look even more ridiculous than they already do in real life.

The danger of something being performed live is that "mistakes can be made." Real life does not always come out as perfectly as a script. Unfortunately for the witnesses of the Iran-Contra hearings Gelbart's script for Mastergate was never made available to them.