The Story Archive

The Cryptogram

David Mamet · 1994 CE · Play · Modern / American · Contemporary

A ten-year-old cannot sleep on the eve of a camping trip with his father, and comes down the stairs again and again into a Chicago sitting room where his mother and his father's friend are talking around him. A torn blanket, a broken teapot and an unopened letter carry everything the adults will not say aloud. Mamet called it the most personal thing he had written; it took the Olivier in London before it reached New York.

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