A couple of times in the past on this blog, I've recommended Mastergate, a "play on words" by the fine comedy writer, Larry Gelbart. Larry decided to try and see if he could top the absurdity of the Iran-Contra hearings with a spoof thereof. The play consists of a series of Congressional hearings. On the spot (or maybe the spit) is a soldier named Major Manley Battle who, not unlike Oliver North, arranges for some U.S. weapons to go someplace they weren't supposed to go — in this case to guerilla forces in Central America, ostensibly to use in filming a war movie. As noted in the L.A. Times noted when the play debuted on Showtime…
"I feel that these kinds of situations are going to be with us forever with government, the military and business being as big as they are," said Gelbart, whose long list of credits includes creator of TV's M*A*S*H and Tony-winning writer of City of Angels. "But first and foremost, Mastergate is a play about the language. It's not for me to discover that politicians are corrupt or full of hot air. It's really about what they and television have done to the way we speak and the way we listen."
The dialogue is amazing…and difficult. Broadway singers have been known to say that the lyrics of Stephen Sondheim are wonderful but very, very challenging for the performer who has to perform them. The speeches, many of them lengthy that Gelbart wrote for Mastergate presented the same challenge to a cast that included James Coburn, Robert Guillaume, Dennis Weaver, Bruno Kirby, Ed Begley Jr., Marcia Strassman, Darren McGavin, Henry Jones, Pat Morita, Tim Reid, Buck Henry, Jerry Ohrbach, Richard Kiley, David Ogden Stiers, Paul Winfield, Ken Howard and Ben Stein.
Why am I mentioning this now? Because its producer, David Jablin, just let me know it's now available to watch on Amazon Prime. I did and it still holds up. Here's a little preview…