Mamet Plays: 3

"The finest American playwright of his generation" (Sunday Times)

Glen Garry Glen Ross (also made into a film starring Jack Lemmon and Al Pacino) is "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 through 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)