Who is the greatest living playwright?

Hmmmmm.....

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Boy, that's awfully tough.

Since the article already rings with Kushner, Albee, Stoppard -- all of whom are more than worthy and maybe equally so -- I'll toss in Charles Mee as the unconventional dark horse.

He writes on his website --

"I like plays that are not too neat, too finished, too presentable. My plays are broken, jagged, filled with sharp edges, filled with things that take sudden turns, careen into each other, smash up, veer off in sickening turns. That feels good to me. It feels like my life. It feels like the world."

I've always loved that little paragraph, and I do believe his work bears it out.

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I change my answer to Jordan Catalano.

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Albee, followed very, very distantly by Guare. Caryl Churchill hasn't written anything in twenty years that doesn't leave the reader/audience feeling like they're being yelled at. And Kushner...well, he's done very well by using intellectualism and grandiosity to compensate for a talent that's modest at best.

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Since when is Sondheim a playwright? He wrote one flop thriller.

Neil Simon died and nobody told me?

Martin McDonagh

May I toss Sarah Ruhl in? I feel like her body of work isn't as established yet, but she's still got a lot to say.

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Curiously, no one seems to be including Shaffer, who is certainly worthy of consideration.

This would have been a more interesting question a few years earlier when August and Lanford Wilson and Horton Foote were still around. Now, the answer is cleary Albee. It might have been then as well.

Kushner's best plays are great. Albee's are far greater.

As to the next best, I said McDonagh before, and Shaffer is his only rival for that position IMO.

Simon's best plays are great. McDonagh's are far greater.

Simon's plays are always amusing; his best are very funny. McDonagh's plays are always very funny, his best are brilliantly so.

If only Frayn had a few more as good as Copenhagen, Churchill a few more as good as Cloud Nine, or Ayckbourn had a few more nearly as good as Norman Conquests, and if only MARGARET EDSON WOULD WRITE ANOTHER PLAY!!!.... then we might have a real contest.

I enjoy me some Reza, but I'm beginning to think she's a one tricky pony. She's had more than one hit, may have hits again, but are they all the same play?

As for young American playwrights, I expect more great things from Lynn Nottage (relatively young in her career, that is to say).

Updated On: 11/5/11 at 09:08 AM

Albee and Simon.

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Definitely Albee.

How ridiculous for that one person to list Sondheim. While I think his songs serve the function of a great playwright, it's a completely different craft, as he'd himself admit. (it is interesting that he's never really worked with--Laurents maybe kinda aside--playwrights who are particularly famous as playwrights, but then that's true of a lot of musical theatre, and many playwrights have had mixed success writing librettos, to say the least).

Albee would be my choice as well,but I admit that some of the criticisms here could be laid on him--his last few plays have been a return to form, but he has had a lot of less impressive moments, and it could be argued (as he admits almost too freely--too freely because I personally don't see it as a failing) that he essentially rewrites the same play over and over as well.

I admit I've cooled towards McDonagh after reading all his interviews where he goes on about how much he prefers film, writing for film, and that's where he wants to focus, over theatre. Fair? not at all--his plays IMHO so fr have been much mor einteresting than his few films, but...

Cloud 9 is one of my favorite plays of all time, as are some other works by Churchill, but I can't say I've enjoyed enough of her work (partly due to lack of exposure) to list her here yet.

Guare is a choice I'd consider...

Neil Simon is great at what he does, but I'd list him in the same category I'd list McNally--which is by no means a bad place to be in, I guess.

Tyler Perry

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