ABSTRACT
Chicago has always been important to David Mamet. It was there that he launched his career, and where he continues to stage his plays. He has always been drawn to those turn-of-the-century Chicago writers who had exposed the underside of American rhetoric, while Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class, which draws on Chicago for much of its evidence, has proved an influential text. Chicago has always been important to David Mamet. It was there that he launched his career, and where he continues to stage his plays. Commissioned by Earplay, a venture of National Public Radio, it was first performed in a stage version in 1977. At its heart is a melodrama not untypical of the radio plays of the 1930s, and, indeed, even in the stage version, part of the action takes place in a radio station, as actors perform in front of microphones.
