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China Doll (play)

China Doll
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Pacino plays the lead role of Mickey in David Mamet's 2015 play China Doll (photo 2014).
Written by David Mamet
Characters Mickey Ross
Carson
Date premiered 2015
Place premiered Broadway
Original language English
Genre Drama
Setting Manhattan apartment

China Doll is a two-act play by David Mamet about political corruption and brutal violence. The play opened on Broadway at the end of 2015 in a short run scheduled to close at the end of January 2016. The two-act play contains only two characters who appear on stage throughout the play, Mickey and Carson.

Act One

Mickey is an elderly retiring political operative and political fixer in the USA who is planning an elaborate May-December wedding to a young fiance who is a British national citizen. Mickey is planning to retire in style with his great wealth by arranging for the purchase of a luxurious private jet made in Switzerland for himself and his soon to be wife. An entanglement arises when Mickey receives a telephone call in his office indicating that the $5 million tax-saving scheme he has planned for his private jet purchase has gone sour. The foreign Swiss jet was supposed to fully stay out of the USA for 6-months for the $5 million tax-saving scheme to succeed. An apparently trivial malfunction caused the jet to land temporarily on USA soil thus seemingly invalidating Mickey's tax-saving scheme. Not only that, but after the jet finally arrives at its original destination in Toronto, its single passenger, his fiance, is subjected to a full strip search while being refused entry into Canada. Mickey goes ballistic when he receives this telephone report in his office. He threatens to renege on delivery of the jet which he still has not fully signed-off on, and he suspects mischief from a new political candidate and contender in the USA with whom he has a history. Mickey begins to suspect that the new candidate, known to him as "the Kid", is the source of upsetting Mickey's $5 million tax saving scheme, and for causing the false report in Toronto which caused his fiance to be denied entry in Canada and to be strip searched.


Act Two

By the next morning, Mickey realizes that he may have overplayed his hand in lashing out against the jet manufacturer, against his assistant Carson, and against the political operatives of "the Kid". "The Kid" is likely to be the next governor of his State, with many inside ties and favors coming his way from the Federal government by way of "the Kid's" inside government connections. Mickey's worst nightmare comes true when he receives a phone call in his office telling him that "the Kid" has pulled in his Federal government "favors" in order to get Mickey formally charged with a Federal indictment for violation and conspiracy against the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, since the jet purchase he was arranging originated under Swiss manufacture from a Swiss contract. Mickey's only life-line is a dirty-secrets political file he has kept on "the Kid's" family of political office holders, and Mickey uses it to make a plea deal on the phone to "buy" himself out of the Federal Indictment on him against the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The deal requires his assistant, Carson, to play along, since Federal marshals have already been dispatched to arrest Mickey. Carson decides that Mickey is not to be trusted, and that Mickey will sell Carson out as part of Mickey's own plea deal. Carson resolves to abscond with Mickey's dirty-secrets political file right under Mickey's eyes, in order to let himself make his own exonerating plea deal for himself. Mickey gets the jump on Carson before Carson can get out the door and mortally bludgeons him with a heavy-gauge metallic scale model of the jet which he was about to purchase. As the dispatched federal marshalls are heard knocking at his office door, Mickey reverses his tactics once again and starts self-inflicting bloody wounds on his own body while shouting to the federal marshals standing outside his door, "Help me. Will... Will... Oh my God. Will no one help an old man...?", at the final curtain as the play ends.


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