THE BEST AMERICAN PLAY—DAVID MAMET’S CHOICE.
THE BEST AMERICAN PLAY—DAVID MAMET’S CHOICE. In the weekend Wall Street Journal, Terry Teachout reviews THEATRE, David Mamet’s new collection of essays. Teachout includes Mamet’s list of the top 10 American plays of the last century. Number one is “Our Town.” I think that’s right, but I am as surprised as Teachout that Mamet picked it. Teachout asks: “And how did a play as lyrical as “Our Town” make it to the top of a list by a tough-guy writer?” Teachout says that a partial answer is that Mamet considers all ten plays to be “intensely American” because “they both treat American issues and are written in an American idiom closer to real poetry than to prose.” Apparently “Our Town” is so American that it is hard for the British to appreciate it. I recall reading a British critic who marveled that “Our Town” is so popular in America—marveled because it is performed very rarely in Britain.