Any similarities between David Mamet's President Charles "Chucky" Smith and our previous commander in chief are in the mind of the beholder.

Sure, in the West Coast premiere of Mamet's farce "November" at American Conservatory Theater, Smith behaves like a spoiled brat when he's not behaving like a clueless buffoon, but hey, who really knows what goes on in the Oval Office?

What Mamet imagines happens there feels like a "Saturday Night Live" skit on steroids with better actors.

The playwright is well-known for his naturalistic, male-dominated dramas like "American Buffalo" and "Glengarry, Glen Ross" where the American Dream takes a bitter toll on those who'll never realize their ambitions. In his plays "Oleanna" and "Speed-the-Plow," Mamet explored male-female dynamics against backdrops of political correctness and Hollywood ethics. The prolific, often-produced Mamet is represented by two plays on Broadway this season – a revival of "Oleanna" and a new work, "Race."

Mamet has famously said, "People, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama." In "November," he makes it the subject of comedy and, though slight of plot and character development, the play is very funny. Set entirely in the Oval Office of a bumbling, oblivious but feisty president who is on the verge of losing a re-election bid, Mamet pokes fun at, but ultimately reveres, our political system.

Mamet's goofy Smith (an effectively sincere Andrew Polk) is going down but thinking of his legacy. In his case, as for many presidents with not much to show for their terms, his legacy will be his presidential library. Only he has no money to build one.

One of the reasons he's losing the election is that his campaign doesn't have any money, either. In fact, the national committee (we never learn his party affiliation, though it hardly matters) has written him off as a loss and moved on. Smith's deadpan chief of staff, the adroit Anthony Fusco, tries to keep the president from falling to pieces and deal with the tasks at hand. Which means Smith has to meet with a representative of the National Association of Turkey and Turkey By-products Manufacturers before the annual "turkey pardon" photo op.

That this "pardon" results in a donation to Smith gives him an idea to raise badly needed funds.

While he negotiates with the turkey lobby representative, played by the shape-shifting Manoel Felciano, Smith calls in his liberal lesbian speechwriter Clarice Bernstein (a red-nosed René Augesen) who's been in China with her partner adopting a baby. Smith needs Bernstein to make his plan work, but Bernstein needs something from Smith in exchange.

This isn't Mamet's strongest narrative dynamic, and he smartly doesn't try to keep it airborne too long. The three acts are short and brisk, barely needing the intermission that breaks acts 2 and 3.

Director Ron Lagomarsino focuses his actors and the action on Mamet's rapid-fire dialogue, letting the comedy spill out of Smith's absurdity.

Though Mamet has admitted a significant antipathy for George W. Bush and his administration, the playwright has argued that he is not a political writer and he believes art is not the place to display one's politics.

Mamet does have an abiding appreciation of our Constitution, though, and our system such as it is.

He can't help but show it in a Bernstein comment to Smith: "People say we're a country divided, but we're not a country divided, what we are is a democracy."

Call The Bee's Marcus Crowder, (916) 321-1120.