David Mamet

David Mamet is America's greatest living playwright, argues theatre director Lindsay Posner in The Observer.

With Mamet, one is instantly struck by the precise demands of his rhythmical dialogue. I remember when working on Sexual Perversity in Chicago, actor Hank Azaria saying he felt like Mamet had turned him into a musical instrument. Indeed, all his plays are clearly influenced by musical ideas, resolution phrasing and terse crosscut exchanges. He has a marvellous ability to capture the rhythms, intonations and idiomatic peculiarities of living speech and then distil them into poetry. His language, like Shakespeare's, has a visceral effect on the audience.