TT: Picking the winners

In Theatre, his new book, David Mamet lists his ten favorite American plays and explains why he likes them so much. The list, as I observed the other day, is full of surprises, but it’s interesting for another reason, which is that it tells the reader at least as much about Mamet himself as it does about the plays he picked. That’s almost always true of what I call “practitioner criticism,” in which a working artist doubles as a critic of the art form that he practices.
So what do we learn about the author of Glengarry Glen Ross from the fact that Our Town is his favorite American play? To find out, pick up a copy of Saturday’s Wall Street Journal and read my “Sightings” column, in which I speculate–fruitfully, I hope–on the insights that David Mamet’s top-ten list offers into his theatrical psyche.
UPDATE: Read the whole thing here.