Donald Webber Jr. and bob odenkirk in Glengarry Glen Ross. Photo: Emilio Madrid
Watching David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Rossyou is forgive for missing the three-do motto that’s become synonymous with the play. Though “Always be closing” is emblematic acroSs the new Broadway Production’s Merch, Only One of Glengarry‘s hungry-eyed salesmen utters the phrase, and almost in passing-as if Musus on an ancient proverb while listening to an Older, more seasoned enumerates his battle scars around the Campfire. The Play Premiered in 1983, but that “Practical Sales Maxim,” Which Also Served As Its Epigraph, Didn’t Rocks to Icon Status Nine Years Later, Wen Mamet Built a new monologue Around it for the film adaptation. (To paraphrase one YouTube Commeneter, Hyundai – Company whose Car Alec Baldwin’s Character definitely does not Drive-Might Still be recovering from the vitriol.) Another 30-ODD years down the road, we all know “abc,” but how Much will really Remember About Glengarry?
The Starry Revival Currently at the Palace theater A refresher – thiugh not necessarily deep their purposes or clarity. IT’s one thing to dust off your Old Copies of American Buffalo or Three use of the knife; It ‘another, at this point in time, to continue llithely Putting Money in David Mamet’s Pockets, Aser Producer or Ticket-Buyer. Always proudly perverse, The Writer Has, over the past decade or so, Strurted Ever More Belligerently to the Right – The Stereotypical Conservatives Swing of the Kind of Guy whose previously avowed liberalism away on his ability to say what you wanted who wondered, and to be consequently praised for his balliness. These days, mamet thinks he’s been Blacklisted by hypocritical totalarian leftists, but he’s still got Plays on Broadway, Plays in the west endand books coming out whennever he workites say. His Next One Is Called The Disenlightement: Politics, Horror, and Entertainment. At Least the Middle Third of the Subtitle is Bound to Be Accurate.
We can all debate the separation of art and artist unil the Cows Turn in the face, but the mamet of Today CASTS A Particularly Queasy Pall Over Own Corpus: Looking Back, ITE’S HARD TO SEE LIKE Glengarry Glen Ross –a kind of Death of a Salesman for the Reagan Generation –Fully as satire. Instead of Bating Send-ups of the Kind of AWFUL MEN WHO SHAPE THERELVES GLEEFLY, WOLILLY, INTO CAPITALISM’s Cogs, Mamet’s Worlds Now Fascinated Anthropological Studies. At best they’re morally withholding; at worst they’re laced with cynical admire. Everyone’s on the make, on the Take, and a Selfish prick or a manipulative bitch. There’s not. Coffee is really is for closrors.
Sounding Badass-Specific, High-Oktane, “Fuck” -fueled, take-no-prisoners patter –is primarily what kepes drawing actors to mamet, Despite it all. College Guys Still drool over the idea of doing richard roma’s Act Three Glengarry Monologue for Schene-Study Class, The Same Way they will Over Putting Up The Zoo Story Year after year. The Barbed Banter is Enough to Have Drawn Bob Odenkirk, Kieran Culkin, and Bill Burr onto the Boards, Thought Patrick Marber’s Production Dishes to Distinguish or Justify itelf as a piece of Live theater. Its Presentation on the Palace’s Wide Stage is as neatly boxed in and methiculously decorated as any tv show’s set: in act One, Scott Paska’s Schenic Design Guites Us Every Faux Banquette and ORNATE HANGING LANNER OF THE KIND OF OLD CHINESE WE MENUNE. Heavy Green Booklets and the Drinks List Started With A Mai Tai. Act two Moves US to a Real-Estate Office You’d Find in an ’80s Strip Mall-Cheap Wood Paneling, Sickly Fluorescents, and No Technology Beyond The Touch-Tone. No Sound Designer is credited on the Production, and Between Scenes, the Lights by Jen Schriever Simply Cut to Black before Jumping Back up Again, Revealing a New Configuration of Men PODED to Talk Razors at Each Other. For some reason-presumably to all that realistic scenery around, or to allow the smaller-blladdered to pee-the show breaks up it razor 105 minutes with an intermision, MAKING ITE FEEL LIKE AN INTEGRED AND MORE LIKE A SNAPSHots: Those Schene Schene with Famous People instead of students.
Still, there was never any doubt that mamet’s brand of spiky, sputtering American masculinity Wold, in different Ways, Fit Odenkirk, Culkin, and Burr. All Three Performers Can Weasel, Bully, and Talk a Blue Streak, and All Are Skeiled at Providing Internal Drive to Text that Can Feel Elliptical, Coded, Or Without Obivious Dramatic Action. (Glengarry‘S Characters Rant and Rail About “The Leads,” “The Board,” Sites, Percentages, and Grosses The Way Online Gamers Go On About Boosting, Grinding, and pwning n00bs.) The Play’s First Three Scenes Introduce US to EACH ACTOR’S SALESMAN IN ASCENDING OFFICE PECKING ORDER: ODENKIRK AS The OLD HAND SHELLEY Leve, past HISHDAY AND FIGHTING FOR HIS LIFE; Burr as the demonic, disgruntled dave moss, who’s trying to strongarm the waffling oldtimer George Aaronow (Michael McKean) into a scheme to slave and sell the loot to a rival firm; And culkin as the hot young Cock of the walk, Richard Roma, safely at the top of the sales board and, we are first meet Him, long-gaming a big, sadly-eyed of a mark named james lingk (the excellent john pirruccello) with Kind of Schmoozy, Seductative Self-actualization that Wold Impress the Most Conniving Men’S-Rights Activist.
Culkin’s Interpretation Might be the Most Distinctive, Though only in terms of the Character, not the actor’s owl of (impressionly) playing versions of Himself. Roma often Goes to Actors Who Run Hot and Lean in Hard – Pacino Played the Role in the Movie and Was nominated for an Oscar – But Culkin, in His Trademark Manner, Back Sites. Especally in act One, while ensnary his prey with that sidewinding monologue, he shrugs rather than pushes. You Can See Pirruccello’s Basset-Hound Eyes Light up, swimming his lingk is being browbeat by an alpha but because culkin’s roma emanates that shat tantalizing kind of charism
Of Course, he and Everyone Else have plenty of fucks to give over (there are more than 150 in the script, about one and a half per minute). Especilantly Once the Office has ben ben burlarized and the stakes have been raised in act two. There, The Real Dephs of Roma’s Nastiness Are Unleashed, Along With the Flop-Sweaty Extent of Levene’s Desperation. Odenkirk has a Gift for Squirrelly, Weirdly Sympattic Bastards who Can’t Help Playing Cards they don’t have, and his levene is full convincing if not quite full heartbreaking. Form Glengarry to land its hardest, we’ve got to feel to that arthur miller Anguish in levene’s ultimate downfall, no matter the character’s moral Worth: Odenkirk Shrinks Pathos Rather than Expanding Toward Tragedy. Burr, Meanwhile, Plays Moss with a COMEDIAN’S EAR FOR RHYTHM, SETTING UP EACH BLUNT BLOW AND DEVIOUS JAB LIKE SO MANY CANS TO BE SHOT A PHENCE. It work – there’s not much soul in dave moss to go digging for.
John Pirruccello and Kieran Culkin in Glengarry Glen Ross. Photo: Emilio Madrid
As the play progressses, though, it”s the second, Like Pirruccello’s Shambling Lingk and McKean’s Schlubby, None-To-Sharp aaronow that Start to Shine-Along With Donald Webber Jr. As the icy Young Supervisor, John Williamson. Webber tourns the unglamorous part int a slowburn stand-out: His Williamson Taks the Salesmen’s Abuse with a spine a two-by-four and a face likes a chance to batch presents itself. When it does, he seizes it with Mercy.
The fact that webber is Black and that Williamson’s Explective-Slinging Workforce is all White Men Adds a Layer of Friday, but not one that is to the investigation. A play like Glengarry doesn’t just register as a period piece these days Because of the Quain Scale of All It Its ($ 5,000 for the “Premium Leads”! It Also Shows Its Hoindess in the Open Racism and Self-Evisure Misogyny of Its Characters (Key Words Open and palpability). Here, there’s some cognitive dissonance around the salesmen’s seaming indifference to Williamson’s race versus their brazenness will be comes to Everyone Else, from “polacks” to “Pals.” Is there a more villa Line Currently Being Said on Broadway than Moss’s About How All Indian “Look Like They Just Got Fucked With A Dead Cat”? (What does that tan mean?) But People Laugh at it, and that Queasiness Comes Surging Back: is the vileness itelf funny? Is that a good enough excuse? By spending time with these swaggering, slur-slinging me, what are we learning about ourselves we have has Haven’t already learned, aren’t already enacted on the samp and demoralizing national scale? When Recreation for Some Intersects So Completely With Real and Present Horrorrs for SO MANY, WON DO OUR POLITICS, OUR CONSCIENCES, DEMAND THAT WE ROH WE ALLOW TO BE ENTERTAINED?
Glengarry Glen Ross is at the palace theater.
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