<\/p>\n
\n\tThe safety curtain that greets audiences filing in for the third Broadway<\/a> revival of Glengarry Glen Ross<\/a><\/em> depicts a set of steak knives, the infamous second prize in a contest for the highest sales figures among colleagues at a scuzzy Chicago real estate office. The knives barely get a mention in David Mamet<\/a>\u2019s original text and in fact are better known from the 1992 screen adaptation, in which Alec Baldwin\u2019s hotshot salesman, Blake \u2014 an additional character created for the movie \u2014 breaks it down for the brokers in his oft-quoted \u201cAlways be closing\u201d pep talk.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cFirst prize is a Cadillac El Dorado \u2026 second prize is a set of steak knives, third prize is you\u2019re fired,\u201d Blake informs them in a warning that\u2019s more verbal abuse than motivational speech. That scene has become iconic, and the steak knives shorthand for mentorship with malice.<\/p>\n \n\tRunner-up in this vicious world of shifty desperados is just a tiny step up from loser, the ultimate emasculating death sentence. Not for nothing did the film\u2019s cast jokingly refer to it as Death of a Fuckin\u2019 Salesman<\/em>, a nod to Mamet\u2019s fondness for profanity as well as Arthur Miller\u2019s everyman tragedy.<\/p>\n \n\tThe curtain image is a clever wink to audiences likely more familiar with the movie than with previous stage incarnations. But this punchy revival \u2014 directed with surgical precision by Patrick Marber<\/a> and played by an ideally cast ensemble firing on all cylinders and pinging off one another with camaraderie that often curdles into contempt \u2014 doesn\u2019t need the nostalgic assist.<\/p>\n \n\tThe production makes a strong case for the play, Mamet\u2019s best, as both a major work of its time and a tart commentary on a type of workplace ruthlessness that\u2019s still very much with us. There\u2019s a reason the men\u2019s room line at any Glengarry Glen Ross<\/em> revival is usually semi-populated by finance and tech bros all whooping with delight as they repeat favorite lines. Their hair product and suits \u2014 crisp and conservative if seldom stylish \u2014 are a dead giveaway.<\/p>\n \n\tMamet wrote the play as a caustic takedown of capitalism, toxic masculinity (before the term was enshrined in the popular vernacular) and vanishing morality in the \u201880s, a decade pretty much defined by greed and rapacious economic growth. It still functions that way more than 40 years later, though for every audience member who flinches at the characters\u2019 vitriolic outbursts, their racist and homophobic epithets, there\u2019s probably another person ready to leap up on the stage and high-five them after some of the tastier streams of invective.<\/p>\n \n\tIn terms of currency, it\u2019s impossible not to consider that the country is now run by men who could very easily be<\/em> vintage Mamet characters \u2014 even if their fluency with fuckity-fuck-fuck snark generally isn\u2019t as poetic. The \u201clooking out for number one\u201d ethos has become so normalized it now seems more savvy than selfish. That go-to reality show-contestant credo of \u201cI\u2019m not here to make friends, I\u2019m here to win\u201d might as well be the personal motto of political strongmen, captains of industry and wheeler-dealers of all stripes.<\/p>\n \n\tWith the rise of the manosphere, it\u2019s not surprising that the tragicomic drama lands with a new sting. I\u2019ll confess I had no burning urge to revisit the play. I caught the memorable original run on Broadway in 1984, with Joe Mantegna as top office salesman Ricky Roma and Robert Prosky as Shelly \u201cThe Machine\u201d Levene, the once unstoppable veteran whose luck appears to have run out.<\/p>\n \n\tI was bowled over by the superb 2005 revival<\/a>, with Liev Schreiber and Alan Alda in those roles. But I was underwhelmed when it returned to Broadway in 2012<\/a>, with Al Pacino, who had played Roma in the film, as Levene in a showboating turn that threw off the play\u2019s balance and drew attention, for all the wrong reasons, away from Bobby Cannavale\u2019s peacocking Roma.<\/p>\n \n\tWhile that production felt stale, a cash grab lacking in electricity, this one seems revitalized. That could be due to the times in which we\u2019re living or to the fresh perspective of Marber, a Brit whose background as a comedian, playwright and director gives him the laser-focused attention to both text and performance that Mamet\u2019s precision-tooled writing requires. (Marber won a Tony Award in 2023 for his intricate direction of best play winner Leopoldstadt<\/a><\/em>, by Tom Stoppard.)<\/p>\n \n\tThe revival\u2019s success at recharging the work\u2019s batteries also comes down to smart casting. From the opening scene \u2014 on designer Scott Pask\u2019s stage-wide Chinese restaurant set \u2014 it\u2019s clear that the staccato rhythms of Mamet\u2019s rapid-fire dialogue still sing.<\/p>\n \n\tLevene (Bob Odenkirk<\/a>, making a thrilling Broadway debut) shifts in agitation back and forth on a red leatherette booth. With hilarious insistence, he maintains a motormouth energy designed to keep office manager John Williamson (Donald Webber Jr.) from getting a word in while he begs and cajoles in the hope of being given some of the promising new sales leads coming in, to end his streak of bad luck. But behind the dead-eyed stare, Williamson is no pushover, holding out even when Shelly bribes him by promising a significant chunk of his commissions.<\/p>\n \n\tHaving established the sales leads as the play\u2019s golden chalice, Scene Two introduces the scam, a favorite Mamet motif. The action shifts to the adjacent booth, where Dave Moss (Bill Burr<\/a>, another knockout debut) sits spewing bile to his less voluble colleague George Aaranow (Michael McKean<\/a>). Moss is enraged over the unrealistic pressure placed on them by the unseen but detested management from head office, Mitch and Murray, whose names come up so often they are almost as a vivid a presence as the characters onstage. \u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIf Shelly seems determined to mask the sinking feeling that his glory days are over, McKean suggests with a hangdog face that Aaranow is resigned to his obsolescence. Looking as rumpled as his cheap suit, he has particularly affecting moments in the second act.<\/p>\n \n\tStill, the unscrupulous Moss uses his wiles and his belligerent way with words to try selling Aaronow on the idea of breaking into the office. He wants to steal the leads and sell them to a rival agency, to which they would both jump ship. That would give them a fresh financial start while also sticking it to Mitch and Murray.<\/p>\n \n\tIn the third scene, Ricky Roma (Kieran Culkin<\/a>) sits alone at a booth making idle chit-chat with James Lingk (John Pirruccello), the restaurant customer trying to read a book at the next table. Roma\u2019s subject is an intrinsically male dissertation on refusing to live with timidity, embracing adventure and opportunity instead. That of course is just a slick preamble before he starts reeling Lingk in on a Florida land deal of dubious value, in a development called Glengarry Highlands.<\/p>\n \n\tAct Two relocates to the offices, looking ransacked after being burgled the night before. There\u2019s no fan, but the shit has clearly hit something. Even the phones have been stolen, a reminder that we\u2019re in the pre-cellphone age. Ricky sails in riding high from the previous night\u2019s sale, insisting that they owe him a Cadillac, and Shelly also arrives crowing after having broken his losing streak. But the mood sours as deals fall apart and a gruff detective (Howard W. Overshown) ushers the employees one by one into an inner office to be questioned.<\/p>\n \n\tOn the surface Ricky Roma might seem not much of a stretch for Culkin after playing the similarly brash, fast-talking Roman Roy on Succession<\/a><\/em> and filter-free Benji Kaplan in A Real Pain<\/a><\/em>, the role that just bagged him an Oscar. But Roma has a different kind of volatility. \u201cAh, Christ \u2026 what a day, what a day \u2026 I haven\u2019t even had a cup of coffee<\/em>,\u201d he says while bouncing off the office walls in anger, probably still wired from whatever he was on the night before.<\/p>\n \n\tCulkin is as adept with a sly, sardonic jab as he is with an explosive tirade and his live-wire physicality is mesmerizing. Almost every time Ricky spits out another infuriated \u201cFuck!\u201d he tosses back his head in anger, his gelled hair standing up like a cockatoo\u2019s crest. That amusing image is the icing on the cake of this tightly structured play\u2019s collision of pitch-dark humor with desperation, disloyalty and encroaching impotence.<\/p>\n \n\tCulkin, Odenkirk and Burr more than earn their marquee billing \u2014 the latter two, along with the always wonderful McKean, holding a mini Vince Gilligan alumni reunion. (That extended on the first press night into the audience, where Bryan Cranston led the standing ovation.) <\/p>\n \n\tCulkin makes Roma a tightly wound ball of energy, puffed up with dick-swinging over-confidence; Odenkirk finds pathos in Shelly\u2019s increasingly futile attempts to keep up a front while his career crumbles beneath him; and Burr bristles with resentment, making uproarious music out of Moss\u2019 strings of expletives. It\u2019s no surprise that the seasoned comic has flawless timing.<\/p>\n \n\tPrime Mamet \u2014 from the good years before he became a hectoring right-wing ideologue \u2014 has always been catnip to first-rate actors. These guys get high off it, and the high is infectious.<\/p>\n \n\tVenue: Palace Theatre, New York The safety curtain that greets audiences filing in for the third Broadway revival of Glengarry Glen Ross depicts a set of steak knives, the infamous second prize in a contest for the highest sales figures among colleagues at a scuzzy Chicago real estate office. The knives barely get a mention in David Mamet\u2019s original text […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[649,648,647,650,651],"class_list":{"0":"post-634","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fashion","8":"tag-broadway","9":"tag-culkin","10":"tag-kieran","11":"tag-mamet","12":"tag-revival"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":636,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions\/636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Cast: Kieran Culkin, Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr, Michael McKean, Donald Webber Jr., John Pirruccello, Howard W. Overshown
Director: Patrick Marber
Playwright: David Mamet
Set and costume designer: Scott Pask
Lighting designer: Jen Schriever
Presented by Jeffrey Richards, Rebecca Gold, Caiola Productions, Roy Furman<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"