Review by Ron Fassler . . .
The first time that audiences heard the precise and profane language of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross was nearly forty-two years ago in September of 1983. And it wasn’t in America, but in England. Unhappy with how his plays were being received in the U.S., Mamet took the advice of his friend and colleague Harold Pinter and gave the play to London’s National Theatre. Directed by Bill Brydon, a Brit who had staged Mamet’s American Buffalo a few years earlier, it was the first American play ever produced at the National. The following year, Glengarry opened in Chicago with a company headed by Joe Mantegna and Robert Prosky, which led to a triumphant Broadway production that received the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Since then, the play has been performed all over the world; made into an exceptionally fine film in 1992, and revived twice on Broadway, once in 2005 and again in 2012. Now it’s back with a starry cast that headlines Kieran Culkin, Bob Odenkirk, and Bill Burr. It’s arrived in this crowded month of April at the mammoth Palace Theatre, usually reserved for musicals and the only stage available (more on how that works out later). Directed by Patrick Marber, who is also a noted playwright (Closer), it is once again in the hands of a British director. Full circle.
Glengarry is based on Mamet’s own experience working in a real estate office in 1969 with a group of guys selling useless properties to clueless marks. Using his patented, uninhibited, rat-a-tat-tat style, later imitated by dozens of playwrights that followed, what comes out of the mouths of his kill-or-be-killed salesmen is generally considered the playwright’s peak achievement. “I sold worthless land in Arizona to elderly people,” Mamet said. “This play is very much about work and about how one is altered by one’s job.”
Though the characters in the play are well-defined by Mamet’s keen ear, apart from a daughter mentioned by Shelley “the machine” Levine (Bob Odenkirk), once a force to be reckoned with and now a shell of his former self, we know nothing about their personal lives. They are defined as salesmen and that is what we get: Ricky Roma (Kieran Culkin), strutting with the confidence of a human peacock; George Aaronrow (Michael McKean), perpetually defeated in a slumped posture and by every word he utters; and Dave Moss (Bill Burr), tactless, combustible and openly criminal. Simple in construction, Act One consists of three, brisk, two-person scenes of the salesmen in the same Chinese restaurant (in this quickly paced production, the entire act runs under forty minutes). It’s all a set up for Act Two, which reveals the tacky office they work in, tossed in an overnight burglary; the result of one, or possibly two of the salesmen breaking in to steal the newest and valuable leads, a list of potential buyers. It’s every man for himself with dialogue that crackles in a well-constructed piece of writing that clearly stands the test of time. It’s nearly impossible not to score in any production of Glengarry, especially in the rewards it carries for actors fortunate enough to play it.
Which brings us to what’s currently onstage at the Palace, as inhospitable a space as if it were in the Gershwin where Wicked has been playing for twenty-one years. Scenic designer Scott Pask has done what he can to put the stage in the laps of those fortunate to sit close, but its massive width defeats its actors who are forced to shout across it like a football field. I felt sorry for Culkan, stuck and practically abandoned stage right while listening to Odenkirk deliver a monologue center stage. The gap is enormous, and it creates something of a power vacuum. Culkin is also lost in another sense in that he doesn’t have the size to effectively convey Ricky Roma’s larger-than-life personality. He has shrunk the role to fit his interpretation, which has nothing to do with his height or build. Both he and his director are responsible for a characterization that is almost antithetical to what Roma’s position in the play calls for, which is someone who commands whenever he opens his mouth. A line like “Whoever told you you could work with men?” is not a line to be said casually. The italics are Mamet’s and the way it appears in the published text. Culkin throws the line away and it gets swallowed up, not so much due to the Palace, but because it’s a choice, and he does it time and again. Bill Burr manages to fill the space with his naturally powerful blunt-force instrument of a voice, practiced for years in his standup routines and regularly performed in both small spaces and major arenas. The two could have swapped roles with better results.
As much as I liked Odenkirk as Levine, he doesn’t reach the pathos required as he falls deeper into desperation. This, like the choices Culkin makes, are the result of Marber’s lack of cracking a whip here. It feels like the actors are left to their own devices; not the worst thing in the world because they are all good craftsmen. But they are done a disservice by direction that isn’t as sharp as Glengarry requires. That said, Donald Webber, Jr. makes a major impression in the role of Williamson, the office’s much despised supervisor, which is not easy to do. It’s a tough role and he nails it. Also excellent is John Pirruccello as a hapless victim of a tough sell, who may be the best actor I’ve seen in this part. He broke my heart a little. And, as always, Michael McKean is a pleasure to have back onstage. At age seventy-seven, he is in top form and once again, quietly steals scenes from his cast mates with effortless thievery.
If you’ve never seen Glengarry Glen Ross, this latest iteration will most probably satisfy since the play survives most of what’s missing. And if you can’t afford it, you can certainly see the film with a cast that plays it to near perfection. Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alan Arkin, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris Jonathan Pryce, and Kevin Spacey will quench your appetite to the nth degree.
Photos by Emilio Madrid.
Headline photo: John Pirruccello as James Lingk and Kieran Culkin as Ricky Roma in “Glengarry Glen Ross.”