The Greatest

By Isaac Butler

Today, Terry Teachout calls Brian Friel "the greatest playwright of the English-speaking world."  Oh dear. I owe Terry Teachout two enormous debts of gratitude, the first for helping to boost both Parabasis and my public profile early and often and the second for making sure that the NYRB brought The Dud Avocado back into my life. But I have to disagree with him here.

I'm also going to assume Terry meant living English language playwrights and either way I'm not well versed in Friel's work enough to mount a serious argument on Terry's statement (because I've never liked his work enough to investigate deeper) so instead, I ask you for your own candidates for TGPOTE-SW.  Have at it in the comments!

(PS: Yes I had a long post ready to go about Rocco's comments and yes the need for that post was totally abrogated by Rocco writing a follow-up blog post about it so this is the best I can do in a pinch.)

Comments

[Mac]

Isaac, do you mean living English playwright? If so, I would say Caryl Churchill.

[Aaron Grunfeld]

Obviously, Teh Greatest is Will S. Whether I'm watching his work or reading it, I feel lucky to hear his language without need for translation.

My pick for TGPOTE-SW (living) is Caryl Churchill.

[James]

With the losses of Wilson and Pinter, I would say Edward Albee, with Caryl Churchill hot on his heels.

[Jack Worthing]

It was Pinter. Now it must be Caryl Churchill.

[Tony Adams]

Fornes among living writers

[Jack Worthing]

Let me qualify that by saying I think FAITH HEALER and TRANSLATIONS are as good as anything written in the last 50 years. I vote for Caryl because she changed, and continues to change, how plays are written and produced; her plays, for all their formal daring and obsession with the English language, have currency anywhere they're put on, and she astonishingly continues to mature as an artist. (Though she's been ill. Let's wish her well.)

[David Cote]

Best living-dead playwright of the zombie-speaking world: Decomposing fellow with no legs growling from the steps of New Dramatists. Or Neil LaBute.

[Terry Teachout]

I did indeed mean "living," Isaac. I guess my editors at the Journal must have read my mind, because none of them questioned the sentence as written!

[isaac]

Ha! It's probably because everyone assumes the answer to "of all time" is Shakespeare. Even though you and I both know it was Schmendrick B. Hayes of Hastings, North Dakota. His thirteen play cycle about fish canneries really redefined american dramatic praxis.

[Jack Worthing]

I think I read that play when I worked in a literary office. I'm not kidding.

[Ian Thal]

Caryl Churchill is in the running for the greatest living English language playwright? Really?

Sorry, but what little of her work I've encountered convinced me that she's an intellectual dilettante with a really good agent. I'll stick with playwrights who write better plays, thank you, especially in a world where Kushner and Stoppard are still breathing.

[Josh]

I could never decide. Churchill, Fornes and Kushner are all great picks as far as I'm concerned.

Slightly off topic: I don't think I'd place any of them in list of "favorite" playwrights, which is apparently a very different list. Why aren't the "best" playwrights also my "favorite?"

Shrugs.

[Jack Worthing]

Kushner, who'd be a truly great writer if he knew what to leave out, and Stoppard, who's written one mighty play that's the equal of anything in the past 100 years (ARCADIA), a soppily enjoyable conservative potboiler (THE REAL THING) and a bunch of inert intellectual execises. (ROSENCRANTZ, JUMPERS, THE INVENTION OF LOVE, HAPGOOD, ROCK 'N" ROLL...) Wit, socialism (on Kushner's part) and rapidly firing synapses do not make for an enduring monument. I quibble, of course, because I have massive respect for them both, personally and professionally. I would kill to write a play half as good as ARCADIA. And even though I love ANGELS, appreciate its magic and how it hit its moment, etc., I'd sooner get drunk than listen to those extended politcal debates. Shaw did those better, and that's saying something. Kushner and Stoppard stretched the possibilities, if you ask me, and that's more than most of us can hope to do. But they haven't moved the earth. Very few people have done that.

[Jack Worthing]

Churchill (and Fornes - Churchill in many ways extended her achievement) fundamentally changed our working lives. The theatre spoke a different language before they came along. That's the criteria I'm using. Beckett did it, Pinter did it, August Wilson did it, Tennessee did it.

[Ian Thal]

Jack, I have to disagree in that INDIA INK which, of any play in Stoppard's ouvre, is the most similar to ARCADIA (in terms of form) is actually the superior of the two, both in terms of ambition and moral depth. ARCADIA is just an easier sell to folk who got into Stoppard through ROSENCRANTZ or JUMPERS since half the puzzle (spoiler alert!) is about fractals and chaos theory, while INDIA INK probably makes English people a little uncomfortable since it addresses their historic role as an Imperial power.

[Jack Worthing]

Never got around to reading it, Ian. I'll have a look. Thanks.

[twitter.com/jmdirexodus]

I'm so tempted to say "Sarah Ruehl" just to get all *that* going again!

[twitter.com/jmdirexodus]

Though you'd think I'd be able to spell her name correctly if I was simply looking to cause mischief...

[Jack Worthing]

I won't even attempt to joke...

[Troubador]

Perhaps not the greatest talent, but the humanity and urgency that imbues Athol Fugard's best work makes him a worthy contender.

[Ian Thal]

I should clarify: perhaps it is true that in the context of her contemporaries, Churchill is a formal innovator. However, I'll note that what "innovations" I've seen in her work are near ubiquitous, but more importantly, I find the intellectual, political and moral content of her work to be superficial compared to the deep humanism of some of the other playwrights named so far.

[Jack Worthing]

I find TOP GIRLS to be heartbreaking. Also the end of CLOUD NINE.

[isaac butler]

Ian,

I think it's a bit unfair to judge one of (if not the) most influential playwright(s) alive by the fact that they've had a lot of influence, and thus their formal inquiries feel familiar. That's like judging Hitchcock based on the work of DePalma.

I'm curious as to what works of hers you're familiar with. As with any prolific playwright, not everything she does is awesome, but there's many that are also really truly great that don't read well. Mad Forest, for example, is a work of unalloyed, through-and-through genius. But it reads terribly, as the first act is almost entirely stage direction without the kind of novelistic explication that can make reading stage direction pleasurable. Basically, if you don't read it VERY closely with a good knowledge of life in Romania in the 1980s, it's inscrutable, but on stage it's really quite legible and beautiful and heartbreaking.

[Pete]

From an article defending Churchill's "Seven Jewish Children":

www.thenation.com/article/tell-her-truth

"Churchill is one of the most important and influential playwrights living, the author of formally inventive, psychologically searing, politically and intellectually complex dramas, including Cloud Nine, Top Girls, Fen, Serious Money, Mad Forest and Far Away."

Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon

[Lucia]

Another vote for Churchill.