Announcement Of A Mamet Revival On Broadway Gives Wokesters The Sads

[Valin]

The Federalist

David Mamet's classic play 'American Buffalo' is coming back to Broadway, and progressive theater cats are none too pleased.

David Marcus

September 18, 2019

Progressive wokesters in the New York theater scene — which, who are we kidding, is pretty much the whole New York theater scene — are in a tizzy after yesterday’s announcement that David Mamet’s play “American Buffalo” will be revived on Broadway.

Sam Rockwell and Laurence Fishburne have been announced as cast members. The 1975 play that follows three hapless criminals was until recently almost universally viewed as a masterpiece. But Mamet is a conservative, and in today’s theater world, conservatives aren’t allowed to have masterpieces.

Within hours of the announcement, prominent theater people were pouncing. David Gordon, the president of the Outer Critics Circle and a features writer at TheaterMania, a leading theater website, had this to say:

(Snip)

There are more, and there is no doubt this attitude toward Mamet and his work is pervasive in the theater world. While all of this is an example of an attempt to activate cancel culture, theater has its own word for that phenomenon that predates it. “Retired” is the word that is preferred. After all, it reeks a little less of censorship. When works, such as traditional performances of “The Mikado,” become problematic, we simply “retire “ them to make room for more intersectional work.

The problem with retiring Mamet is that for nearly the last five decades he has been the most important playwright and screenwriter in America, and it’s not close. Along with “Glengarry” and “Buffalo,” Mamet wrote the influential “Oleanna” and “Speed-the-Plough.” On the silver screen, he penned or co-penned such classics as “The Verdict,” “The Untouchables,” and “Wag the Dog,” among many others.

(Snip)

When and if David Mamet retires, it will be because he chooses to, not because a chorus of woke scolds howl into the Twittershpere and spill angry ink in theater rags.

A line in my favorite Mamet play, “Squirrels,” sums up this situation nicely. “Smoke your own salmon, then talk. Cultivate your own garden, then talk. You make your own fun.” Mamet makes his own fun, and we get to enjoy it. For that we should remain grateful.