Word: mamet
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What ever happened to David Mamet? It may seem an odd question to ask about a playwright who is so constantly with us. No fewer than three of his plays--American Buffalo, Speed-the-Plow and Oleanna--have been revived on Broadway in just the past year or so. His terse, fragmented, elliptical dialogue; his rogue's gallery of hustlers, con men and losers; his twisty, shaggy-dog plots; his cynical take on the American dream--Mamet's style and themes have seeped into nearly every pore of American theater. (Non-American theater too: Martin McDonagh, whose Irish black comedies...
...Mamet's reputation as a major playwright rests on a surprisingly slim body of work, rapidly receding into the distance. Only two or three of his plays--American Buffalo (1975), Glengarry Glen Ross (1983) and perhaps his scalding one-act Edmond (1982)--can fairly be called masterpieces. What's more, Mamet, 62, has been on a steady downhill slide for nearly two decades, bottoming out with his labored period piece Boston Marriage, in 1999, and his brutally unfunny political farce November, which landed on Broadway two years...
...major play to open on Broadway this fall is another Chicago product: Superior Donuts, Tracy Letts' follow-up to August: Osage County, his multi-award-winning family drama that stormed Broadway nearly two years ago and is now on a national tour. Chicago theater's most celebrated export, David Mamet, will be represented on Broadway with two works this fall: a revival of his 1992 drama Oleanna and a new play, about black-white tensions at a law firm, titled Race. Meanwhile, hot Chicago director David Cromer--whose moving, teacup-size revival of Our Town is a megahit downtown--will...
Chicago, of course, has been a major force in American theater for some years. The Steppenwolf Theatre burst on the national scene in the 1980s, introducing plays by Mamet, Sam Shepard and others, popularizing a high-voltage performance style and spawning stars like John Malkovich and Gary Sinise. The city's biggest resident theater, the Goodman, has produced everything from major revivals of Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller to last year's Pulitzer Prize winner, Ruined by Lynn Nottage, while a growing roster of smaller off-Loop theaters have nurtured experimental works like 2007's critically acclaimed musical version...
Huff's play outshines the two other Chicago offerings that have opened so far this fall: Letts' Superior Donuts, a relatively formulaic comedy-drama about a crusty inner-city doughnut-shop owner and the black kid who comes to work for him, and Oleanna, Mamet's scathing account of a bogus sexual-harassment charge that was too polemically freighted back in 1992 and has the added disadvantage of seeming dated today. But collectively, they showcase much of what makes Chicago theater so distinct and vital. The City of Big Shoulders produces big-shouldered theater as well--thematically ambitious, emotionally juiced...