Keep Your Pantheon (and School): Two Unrelated Plays by David Mamet

You have to agree – the title is a smart-ass pun of words, huh?

Keep Your Pantheon is Mamet's 2008 play about a troupe of poor Roman actors struggling to make a buck (well, a few hundred sesterces) and keep not even their pants – their heads on.

Frankly, as much as I like Mamet (by all means, the man is a great playwright), while the book is quite readable (and, god is merciful, short: just 70 pages), it's just not as much fun as, say, Glengarry Glen Ross or Oleanna or even more recent Race.

It is witty and it is about ancient Rome, a very trendy topic recently, but not something I could relate to in full. It probably had something to do with the fact that I view Mamet as a quite contemporary author, and all his attempts at pre-XXth century settings are not exactly my favorites, movies inclusive – take The Winslow Boy, for example – weak.

School is way too short – plus it lacks a meaningful story for me to like it – thought it had a funny quote for me to steal.

B: No, we “won” the war. Though, while not debatable, it is ironic. That the cars we drive. Are made by the nations we obliterated. That's ironic.