Attending Glengarry Glen Rossduring its U.S. premiere in Chicago in 1984, I found the shock value palpable. But that didn’t stem from David Mamet’s characters, dilemmas and values as much as from the play’s language, delivered in staccato. In 2013, Asolo Rep yet issues various related warnings to prospective audiences.
Scatological words that have become common still have power to project feelings such as fright and hopelessness or attitudes like disdain. Overlapping dialogue may be pushy, attempting domination or conversely agreeable. Cacophony reflects the characters’ competiveness, while rhythm carries their struggles symphonically to a powerful coda.
In Act I’s three scenes’ then-typical Chicago Chinese restaurant, first Shelly Levine (Douglas Jones) loudly and desperately begs cool, calm young boss Williamson (Jesse Dorman) for good leads. On their lack, the prize salesman of the past blames his now past-prime performance. Is a family illness another spur to getting back on track or a reason he’s been off it?
In another booth, George Aaronow (David Breitbarth) decries pressures to less anxious, slick Ray (Jay Patterson). A threat-or-treat contest will pink-slip the worst salesman. The best will get a new car. Ray gruffly floats the idea of stealing, then selling the leads to a competitor as a way to “show up” the boss. To what might the nervous, seemingly more ethical George agree?
Smooth Richard Roma (Eric Hissom) in booth #3 draws meek, gullible James Lingk (Francisco Rodriguez) into being adventurous via buying a Glengarry Glen Ross, Florida, lot. Roma slyly moves both physically and psychologically close in to trap his prey.
Act and scene shift from intimate red-furnished spaces to a fluorescent-lit, cluttered, white-tiled office with scattered desks and a door to an exec inner sanctum. George is ushered in by a gun-toting detective (Jacob Cooper, tough) for questioning. Someone stole the leads!
In and up to a big blackboard of sales scores rushes Levine. He publishes 82,000. (Doug Jones describing the contract signing makes a memory to savor.) Levine’s number may be less than Roma’s, but a likely upset appears as timorous Lingk enters to cancel his order in the time the law allows.
A climactic anger, whether red-hot or washed-out-blue, engulfs all. Not only during Roma’s wheeling and dealing but before and after the mystery of the theft is solved, the line between closers and losers thins to breaking.
Is Roma’s conclusion--”We’re a dying breed”--also Mamet’s? Or the audience’s?
At the 19th century’s start, the scholar-novelist Robert Herrick found Chicago the center of a new feudal order where American social and political Darwinism so clearly moved forward. Upton Sinclair followed with his exposure of the city as a “jungle” typified by its meat industry. After a century of writers tracing “progress” toward American success in its urban center, Mamet’s characters expose the moral cost of pursuing happiness via no-holds-barred business.
Business is anything but usual in Asolo Rep’s Glengarry Glen Ross as conducted by director Carl Forsman leading an earnest ensemble of actors. Each “salesman” of his role makes a winning pitch in Lee Savage’s well-designed contrasting settings. Colors go from Chinese upbeat red to the office’s harsh no-color. What’s seen matches what’s heard in every respect as this modern classic unfolds.
