Does David Mamet still matter?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2009/sep/28/david-mamet No. Er, sorry, here’s the essay… “A decade ago, the critic John Heilpern, who recently left his post at the New York Observer, published a collection of theatrical reviews and musings entitled “How Good Is David Mamet Anyway?” In the titular essay, Heilpern concluded: “The dramatist of early superior plays such as American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross has long since settled for dramatically less. Mr Mamet now merely prefers to provoke.” A new play, Race, will make its Broadway debut in November. Mamet has remained typically tight-lipped about its plot, but theatre gossip doyen Michael Riedel has ferreted out a script and called it “Speed-the-Plow in blackface”. It apparently concerns two male lawyers – one black, one white – and their female legal assistant, who take on a racially charged rape case. It would be foolish to argue against Mamet’s genius. I first read him at university and I remember feeling amazed an
