Cartoon by Leo Abbett

Playwright David Mamet argued in a 2003 "Guardian" article that Tony Curtis was a greater actor than Laurence Olivier. Now, after really disliking a London production of "The Night of the Iguana," Mamet proclaims that academic and theater critics have mistakenly beatified Tennessee Williams. It may be time to call in a handler.

The irony is that scathing attacks on Williams have been made by the very academics and reviewers Mamet condemns in the piece as "the educationally overburdened." Williams's artistic stature has been challenged for decades. The 1962 premiere of "The Night of the Iguana" kicked off a prolonged period of drubbing, typified by the headline for Richard Gilman's 1963 review of "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore": "Mistuh Williams, He Dead." The lambasting helped propel Williams into a self-destructive descent into drugs and alcohol. Aside from the unquestioned successes of "The Glass Menagerie" and "A Streetcar Named Desire," Williams's scripts were infrequently produced in the '80s and '90s.

That has changed of late, with companies large and small staging Williams's lesser known scripts, looking for neglected gems. In New England this season, for example, Hartford Stage, as part of an ongoing commitment to presenting the plays of Williams, is staging his comedy "A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur." The SpeakEasy Stage Company is producing "Five by Tenn," an evening of one-act plays. From the shows I have seen, prospects for sainthood are dicey. There have been no astonishing rediscoveries, though poking around in corners of Williams's oeuvre has encouraged a deeper appreciation of his achievement, its strengths and weaknesses.

Mamet will have none of any reevaluation, however, asserting that Williams was washed up by the time he hit middle age because writing good plays "requires the courage of youth still inspired by rejection and as yet unperverted by success." So much for Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, who were writing masterpieces into old age, as well as such decent middle-aged achievers as Shakespeare, Shaw, Ibsen, Pirandello, etc.

Mamet admits that "The Night of the Iguana" has dramatic poetry, but that doesn't matter. According to him, Williams fails to write dialogue that advances "the intention of the character." If a stage character doesn't "want something from someone else" then the play is no good. In "The Night of the Iguana," says Mamet, "nothing happens," "folks show up, declare their particular brand of unhappiness and life goes on." If that is the standard, Beckett certainly is overrated. Mamet has a point about dramatists who self-indulgently let their characters gas on. But he is wrong about "Iguana." Gilman puts it well: the play posits "that there is a need for courage and for the acceptance of mortal frailty in ourselves and others."

Mamet's article says less about an out-of-control Williams cult than about the course of his own stage career. His theater work since 1984's "Glengarry Glen Ross" has been mostly mediocre. Now approaching 60, Mamet is a major dramatist turned minor film director, a disappointing case himself of the artistic perversion brought on by success.

Subscribe to WBUR's Arts Newsletter

MORE ARTS HEADLINES

	Curtains for Boston Costume			"So Much, So Fast"
	Anything But Ordinary			Roller Rink on Thin Ice

		Arts Features Films at the Gate Photos See photos of kung-fu movies and former Boston Chinatown movie theater locations. Guerrilla Art See photos of local artist Matthew Hincman's bench-like sculpture. "O" is for Original Local artist "Danny O" portrays whimsical scenes of summer in Boston. Multimedia Singer at 100 An exclusive online special explores the controversial work and life of Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer. Gauguin's Tahiti Paintings Take a multimedia tour of Paul Gauguin's Tahiti paintings, including the famous painting, "Where Are We From." Hawthorne at 200 View a multimedia celebration of Nathaniel Hawthorne's 200th birthday.