A Mamet play for people who don’t like Mamet? Why the fuck would anyone produce that? In this political farce, the playwright continues to employ his fucking favorite literary tool: expletive as adjective, adverb, verb and noun. What’s missing, however, is that one Mamet character, so mean or desperate, that he scares the fuck out of us.

Until two months ago, November was running on Broadway with Nathan Lane starring as President Chuck Smith, a political duck dead in the water after one term. Employing a bit of fantasy, Mamet imagines a world in which a U.S. leader can be reviled by voters, even castigated by his own party, for being inept and corrupt, and launching an unnecessary and ill-planned war.

The fantasy is so close to reality that it should be cutthroat funny, while simultaneously filling us with despair. Mamet can do this. Mamet's film Wag the Dog succeeded on both counts. Unfortunately, in November, characters each have their spot on the well-crafted Oval Office set without seeming to bear weight. Charles Goad as Chuck soaks all the humor he can out of swearing into the phone at former allies, extorting money from turkey farmers and shafting his speechwriter for one more chance to fool America. The president’s lawyer (Tom Beeler) coolly volleys back every “fuck” his client tosses. The speechwriter (Diane Timmerman) provides the bogus history lesson dressed up in pretty imagery, while advancing her own cause: to marry her girlfriend. The intentionally non-PC grunting Native American (Doug Johnson) is the foil for Chuck’s exit plan.

It is the under-the-radar performance of Stephen Hunt as Turkey Guy that suggests what the play might have been. Offering more than the glib delivery, comic sneezes and bulging eyes of the other players, Hunt carries not just his character’s mission but his burden. Turkey Guy doesn’t just say he’s worried about the health of his birds, which wait unseen for a Thanksgiving presidential photo op. He projects it in his slightly slumped shoulders and flatfooted walk, and with his crestfallen offense, then resignation, at having to grovel before a self-serving leader.

Perhaps Turkey Guy is Mamet’s Every Man and Mamet is a genius. It was just so hard to see it underneath all the glib.

November continues through Oct. 11 at the Phoenix Theatre, 749 N. Park Ave. Tickets are $25; $15 for those 24 and under. On CheapSeats Thursdays (every Thursday of the 2008-2009 season), all tickets are just $15. For reservations, call 317-635-PLAY or go to www.phoenixtheatre.org.