‘The Shawl’: Smart and spooky

By Joe Brown

Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2009 | 2 a.m.

“The Shawl,” a seldom-performed three-hander by David Mamet, culminates in a seance.

Which, if you think about it, is one way of describing what theater is — a group of people gathered in a darkened room to bring disembodied voices, ancient or modern, to life.

Las Vegas Little Theatre has dusted off this seldom-performed 1985 short play in four acts, which offers a glimpse behind the curtain of the psychic biz. A tricky little treat, it’s the thinking person’s Halloween entertainment.

In a dimly lit chamber, John, a clairvoyant, entertains a prospective client, Miss A. Creating a smoke screen of words and gestures, John warms up his reticent client, teasing out the essential, potentially lucrative crux: Miss A’s mother recently died, leaving her daughter out of her will.

The would-be heiress doesn’t know that hiding behind a curtain in the room is Charles, John’s younger protege. In the second act, John explains the techniques and ethics of the business to impatient and apparently predatory Charles, with whom he is involved in a dubious sexual relationship.

As in “Glengarry Glen Ross” and “American Buffalo,” Mamet explores his fascination with flim-flams and scams, detailing a con job in miniature, with an experienced charlatan passing on the tricks of the trade. Via the explosive soliloquies and terse, repetitive exchanges between the characters, relationships gradually emerge from the murk like a photograph developing in a darkroom.

“The Shawl” is a showcase for Brandon McClenahan, who is convincing and conflicted as John the medium. McClenahan displays masterful timing as he “cold reads” Miss A., and in his frothing extended trance, he is creepy and comical.

Wary and inwardly focused as the enigmatic mark Miss A, Natascha Negro gives a quietly compelling performance, evincing genuine emotion and allowing the possibility that the prey may in fact be the hunter.

As Charles, Thomas Watanabe remains a cipher, delivering his lines in a whiny, peevish contemporary tone. He seems to be in another time — maybe another play — leaving this delicate triangle oddly unbalanced.