Mamet Plays: 3: Glengarry Glen Ross; Prairie du Chien; The Shawl; Speed-the-Plow David Mamet
The finest American playwright of his generation (Sunday Times) Glen Garry Glen Ross (also made in to a film starring Jack Lemmon and Al Pacino) his superb play about real estate salesmen in a cut-throat sales competition (New Society); in Prairie du Chien a railway carriage speeding through the Wisconsin night is the setting for a violent story of obsessive jealousy, murder and suicide, told within shooting distance of a card-hustler and his victim. A short poignant study in violence and the twin drives of love and money, told with hypnotic power thorugh a travelling raconteur (City Limits); The Shawl shows a clairvoyant wondering whether to cheat a bereaved woman of her inheritance and confirms Mamet's place as about the best living writer of vivid American dialogue (Daily Telegraph). Set in the cut-throat world of Hollywood, Speed-the-Plow sees two old-time movie collaborators manipulate the aspirations of a young woman who will do anything to attain her dream of success a brilliant black comedy, a dazzling dissection of Hollywood cupidity. (Newsweek)