How Good Is David Mamet, Anyway? (Hardcover: 304 pages)
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Product Details: How Good Is David Mamet, Anyway?
| Author: | John Heilpern |
| Format: | Hardcover: 304 pages. |
| Publisher: | Routledge Chapman & Hall (11/01/1999) |
| ISBN: | 0415925479 |
| ISBN13: | 9780415925471 |
| Reading Level: |
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Pro Reviews: How Good Is David Mamet, Anyway?
Heilpern is as erudite and sophisticated as you'd expect an Oxford man who worked under Peter Hall at the Royal National Theatre to be, but his greatest merit as a critic may be his refusal to let intelligence get in the way of enthusiasm. When he loves a show, he simply loves it, losing all fear of being though unsubtle or indiscriminating....Heilpern's best writing offers many of the strange, almost religious delights of an evening at the theater....[This book is] more than a collection of witty essays or a defense of a seemingly archaic art form. It's a testament that, as Heilpern writes of a performance by Judi Dench, 'speaks to us of such a profound belief in theater that it amounts to a religion, a mysterious renewal, a way of life.'
The book is a collection of 70 short essays on recent New York Theatre. And although I continue to disagree with much said on many of the pages, there is a more acute awareness of the effort which goes into theatre than is usually seen today. Heilpern writes wonderfully and when I found myself disagreeing with his opinion it was usually a legitimate argument about art...not merely over what is cruel to write about a performer or a show and what is not cruel. For students of the theatre or of literature in general, John Heilpern's book is a fine tool to generate discussion....
Publisher Notes: How Good Is David Mamet, Anyway?
- What makes an actor great? Why is English theater better than American-or is it? How good is David Mamet, anyway?
John Heilpern, theater critic for "The New York Observer," has spent a career watching the plays and the players, the geniuses and the also-rans, the great and the not so great on both sides of the Atlantic, and writes about them with lightness and passion.
"How Good is David Mamet, Anyway?" is the best of John Heilpern's theater writings. The players are many: Vanessa Redgrave and Ralph Fiennes, Helen Mirren and George C. Wolfe, Fiona Shaw and Savion Glover, Karen Finley and David Mamet, and dozens of others. There's also an important essay on the differences between the British and American theater scenes, profiles of such legends as Noel Coward, Alec Guinness, and Michael Bennett, engaging pieces on such figures as Peter Brook and Robert Brustein, review-essays on dozens of great, good, and awful plays, as well as contrary opinions on some of our most widely admired playwrights. There are comic turns, too: "The Year of the Penis" and "The Art of Falling Asleep at the Theatre." Serious or witty, John Heilpern's criticism persuades us that theater matters, after all.
For anyone who loves the stage and its timeless mystery and fun, "How Good is David Mamet, Anyway?" is a chocolate box of a book.
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