Mamet's 'Romance' language

There's a hallucinating, pill-popping judge who suffers from hay fever; a by-the-book defense attorney who slowly comes undone by his own client (who is on trial for who knows what); and a prosecutor whose gay boyfriend throws tantrums and somehow tantalizes the judge and the bailiff. Squabbles and slurs constantly interrupt the trial, which occurs while a Middle East peace conference is underway in the same city.

"I read the script and it made me laugh out loud," says actor Jim True-Frost, best known for playing a bungling cop-turned-teacher in HBO's "The Wire," speaking by phone during a recent rehearsal break. True-Frost plays the defense attorney in the American Repertory Theater production of "Romance," which runs tomorrow through June 7.

"It's completely politically incorrect, and I guess the success of the play depends on where you sit in your own political sensitivity or racial sensitivity," True-Frost says. "People will be made to laugh at certain segments of the play, or be like oh ha-ha-ha I've heard that one before, or fall out of their seats laughing at other segments."

True-Frost, who played Marcus Brutus in ART's "Julius Caesar last year, has kept himself busy since moving to Cambridge four years ago with his wife, Cora, who teaches law at Harvard University.

He spent five months last summer on Broadway in "August Osage County" when one of the actors dropped out of the play, and for the last two years he has been teaching at the ART/MXAT Institute for Advanced Theater Training. True-Frost and his wife also had a baby, Leo, who is now 6 months old and has cerebral palsy.

"It's been very busy," True-Frost says. "Two very career-oriented people are suddenly very family-oriented. Our lives changed."

But he still finds his escape on stage, he says. His defense attorney in "Romance" is a high-strung professional with a guilty-looking client, and that professionalism crumbles once his client starts pushing his buttons.

"This play is like a musical score," the actor says. "There are lots of interruptions and half sentences and repetition. . . . There's a huge amount of attention just learning the very precise language."

Such distinctive language is a hallmark of Mamet, known for plays from "Glengarry Glen Ross" to "Speed-the-Plow" and films including "Wag the Dog," according to "Romance" director Scott Zigler.

Zigler was a student of Mamet at New York University in 1983, and he went on to work with him on a number of his films and plays. He has a firsthand sense of the writer's sensibilities.

"I think David's plays are always defined by the handling of language," says Zigler. "David has always had a talent for capturing human behavior, crystallizing it, and sharpening its focus."

"Romance," he says, is first and foremost a comedy about prejudice.

"It revels in taking the ideal of being politically correct and turning it so violently upside down that you have to laugh at it," he says. "This play is about deeply accepted racial stereotypes ingrained in the fabric of our society. And it's funny."

"Romance" kicks off an ART festival celebrating Mamet's comic work called "Sex, Satire, Romance, and Ducks," which includes a double bill of two of Mamet's early comedies, "Sexual Perversity in Chicago" and "The Duck Variations," running at Zero Arrow Theater June 11-28.

The ART/MXAT Institute also presents "Seriously Funny," an evening of short comedies by Mamet and his friends and frequent collaborators Harold Pinter and Shel Silverstein, running May 29-June 6 at Zero Arrow.

Information: 617-547-8300, www.amrep.org

Megan Tench can be reached at mtench@globe.com.