International Herald Tribune, 23 July 2003
by Sheridan Morley
**Thanks, Beck

David Mamet, alone among leading native dramatists, has dragged the American theater away from the classical, craggy integrity of Arthur Miller and the Deep Southern emotional outpouring of Tennessee Williams toward an urban, street-smart, high-definition intensity. His "Edmond," written 20 years ago, now gets a lavish revival on the National's Olivier stage, which is notable for two debuts - that of the actor Kenneth Branagh, and the director Ed Hall (son of the aforementioned Peter Hall), who come together for a powerhouse tour of the lower depths into which the title character falls after what seems like the innocuous decision to leave his querulous wife. With breathtaking speed, he falls through a series of trapdoors, tumbling from street con artists through bars and brothels to an eventual murder and the jail where at last he finds happiness, able only then to formulate a philosophy of the random nature of life and death. What saves "Edmond," the play and the man, from being a portentous "Pilgrim's Progress" through the horrors of the inner city, is that Mamet remains cynically and caustically funny about the people - he sketches in here more than 20 of them and all treated like hostile cartoons. All except Branagh's "Edmond."

Branagh holds "Edmond" together with a remarkable kind of intensity and manages the high-speed gear shifts that are the essence of every fractured scene. In a sizable cast such character-acting stalwarts of the National as Harry Towb and Tony Haygarth, as well as newcomers such as Nicola Walker do what they can with flickering roles that disappear almost as soon as we first meet them. As a "Peer Gynt" for the second half of the 20th century, it works well enough in its own fragmentary, edgy, staccato style.