Word: playwrights
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2010-2019
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
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...
...look at Topic A of the Obama era--from becoming, sight unseen, the dramatic event of the Broadway season. The fact that, once it was seen, the play turned out to be a dud was not especially surprising. But it was cause for a hard look at whether the playwright's own race has finally run its course...