Glengarry Glen Ross Hits the High Notes
Glengarry Glen Ross. Photo Maria Vartanova.
One wonders whether that born-again conservative, David Mamet, ever feels like disowning Glengarry Glen Ross, the play that won him the Pulitzer Prize for drama. Probably not, given that Mamet’s exploration into the slimier recesses of capitalism continues to earn him hefty royalties.
Still, given Mamet’s current political views, there’s undeniable irony in the continuing power of Glengarry Glen Ross, particularly when it gets a production as good as the one served up by The Acting Company at the Gladstone. The show asserts its credentials immediately with that classic opening scene in a Chinese restaurant and the spectacle of a washed-up real estate salesman, a man whose best days are long gone, desperately trying to get back in the game.
You can feel the sweaty panic in Tom Charlebois’s performance as this pathetic has-been, Shelly Levine. His displays of self-confidence and bonhomie are shams: he’s at the end of his tether, at one point attempting to bully his office manager into giving him the names of a couple of good potential sales, and in the next breath disintegrating into pleading and bribery. Shelly’s humiliation is complete as it becomes apparent that his much younger superior, portrayed with smug venom by Leslie Cserepy, is toying with him. If he accedes to Shelly’s pleadings it will be at a price — and ethics be damned.
We’re being drawn into a rancid culture of greed, deceit and outright criminality. But this coruscating scene also brings out the rough, profane musicality of Mamet’s naturalism. This is R-related dialogue, and it’s part and parcel of the unique rhythms and cadences of the particular world which the playwright lays out and dissects.
Director Geoff Gruson’s tough-minded production honours the play’s furious sensibility: the driven realtors in this production are prepared to go to the brink and beyond to secure a sale. And we shouldn’t really expect any mitigating evidence of self-loathing. The deal is all that matters.
There’s impressive ensemble work here, and the production — like the play — moves with a primitive savagery. But the individual performances — for this remains a character piece — are ultimately what count. And they are good.
Steve Martin, an actor who seems to get better with every performance, is slickly ingratiating as Ricky Roma, the office’s top salesman, an oily huckster adept at inducing the gullible into buying properties they don’t really want. And Dale MacEachern is every inch the victim in the scene where he’s seduced by Ricky into writing a cheque that he’s regretting only hours later.
John Muggleton scores as the boorish Dave Moss, a hectoring, resentful loudmouth ready to resort to crime to get what he wants. And Chris Ralph is splendid as a fellow salesman who’s not quite the milquetoast he appears to be.
David Magladry’s set designs, although simply conceived, do the job that’s required of them as barren adjuncts to a morally barren universe.
Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
An Acting Company production at the Gladstone Theatre to July 5
Director: Geoff Gruson
Set and Lighting: David Magladry
Sound and Music: Melinda Roy
Shelly Levine: Tom Charlebois
John Williamson: Leslie Cserepy
James Lingk: Dale MacEachern
Ricky Roma: Steve Martin
Dave Moss: John Muggleton
George Aaronow: Chris Ralph
Detective Baylen: David Whiteley