How Good Is David Mamet, Anyway?
I’ll confess to never having read Heilpern’s work before – it was the title that got me, as I’m not the world’s largest Mamet fan, at least in the non-fiction of his that I’ve read of late. And it’s fairly unusual for someone in the theatrical community to take on a contemporary icon. But take him on Heilpern did, as well as writers at the New York Times, American anglophilia, Disney Land (the new name for Broadway), and other topics. At the same time, he’s anything but mean-spirited. Many of his pieces put praise where he thinks it’s due and tries to analyze what is good and bad about productions. Many of his observations run from the droll to the uproariously funny. And where else can you get a delightful transcript of a lunch between Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson. If you’ve any regard for theater, or for intelligent criticism of any sort, you should be tickled with this book. Now I’ll have to get hold of a copy of his Osborne biography.
