The Rise and Fall? of David Mamet

Hi folks!

One of my favorite theatre articles is the NY Post one about Al Pacino and the countless problems with the play "China Doll." It really is a damning spread on the whole production, but Riedel seemed particularly sharp when talking about the playwright David Mamet.

Then I remembered some BWW forum topics where he was also spoken about in...shall we say...not very positive terms. Which brings me to my question: what is the general beef with Mamet?

Is it because he's super-protective of his scripts? His ban on post-show talkbacks? Or is he just notoriously painful to work with? I'd love to know what "sets him apart" in this way.

Oh, The Anarchist. To say it was not his finest hour is being very kind. Nothing like watching what should have been a single, short scene in a full play dragged into the dullest 80 minutes I had ever sat through at that point.

Mamet hasn't written a quality play in decades, and his last several have been downright abysmal. His style has become passé and repetitive- a style from a different era that has not particularly aged with the times-and his controlling nature of his text doesn't help.

His pivot toward being an outspoken conservative hasn't helped matters, either.

He's a writer who has not been able to change with the times. Instead, he's ossified.

Updated On: 5/24/18 at 12:54 PM

Just wonder what it's even based on? Is it all allegations?

Oy vey. Can't help but feel like Mamet is the absolute worst personal to tackle this subject matter. Surprised any producer would even touch this with a 10-foot-pole.

I'm a huge fan of David Mamet's plays. I consider Sexual Perversity in Chicago and American Buffalo to be his masterpieces, and while I don't think they're anything special, I can't say I absolutely hated reading China Doll or The Anarchist.

When I read that David Mamet became a conservative, I figured it didn't really matter to me, because I still enjoyed his plays and many of his views on theatre. Then I watched interviews where he said that birth control is ruining the economy because women aren't able to trap men with unplanned pregnancies anymore, and I came to the conclusion that I like David Mamet the Playwright a lot more than I like David Mamet the Person.

I chalk his lackluster plays in recent years up to plain apathy. It seems like he doesn't try as hard with his newer plays. Perhaps it's because he's now in his seventies, and he feels like he doesn't have the time to perfect his scripts. I still find myself compelled by his premises and his dialogue, but his plays always leave you wanting more, and not in a good way.

Love him or hate him, Mamet's writing has a power that few others can match. At his best (Glengarry Glen Ross, Oleanna, Speed-the-Plow) the rhythms and sheer verbiage of the text can make merely reading the script a white-hot excercise. Even his more middling work (November, The Woods, The Anarchist) has technique and excitement in a way that few of his successors can match.

One of the most educational evenings I had was reading the script to China Doll. The play onstage was a monumental bore, Al Pachino was beyond terrible, and I had no idea what the plot was. The spark of life shown in the last minute was far too little far too late to save the evnings from being the single worst thing I have ever seen professionally. So imagine my surprise when I read the script to the same play and found it to have a clarity never revealed on Broadway as well as being a mildly entertaining read. The play is never going to be Hamlet, or even Children of a Lesser God, to name a recent middling show. However, it serves as a warning to rely on star power for a play. Al Pachino's inability to memorize lines or act robbed the play of its traditional Mamet rhythms and obscured the plot. It turned into a wandering, babbling monologue that wouldn't end. Of course, it hardly matters since the show was a (commercial) success and sold extraordinarily well for it's limited engagement.

On the other hand, The Anarchist, which I did not see, is a script I keep returning to again and again. Judge me however you want, but I love the text and cannot understand why it wasn't successful. From virtually every review, both on here and professionally, it is obvious the play was bad, but the script reveals to me a meditating thought piece on the nature of good and evil. That may be its chief flaw: it's great as a theocratic essay, but not sustainable as drama. I still love the script.