I've seen a fair number of productions of David Mamet's plays over the years, so it was a bit of a surprise that the Rep's “Glengarry Glen Ross” should feel like such a discovery. Certainly the extraordinary caliber of the cast allowed each of these distinctive and distressingly familiar men to be fully realized. Wilson Milam's direction handled the pace and nuance of that crude, mostly profanity-laced dialogue to make it feel natural and as commonplace as spit on the sidewalk. The always satisfying twists and turns of the plot felt fresh, surprising and inevitable. The set design (Eugene Lee) was absolutely brilliant, an entirely contained, dilapidated world of industrial corruption, venality and fear for the real estate office and a gaudy, cheesy row of velvet cells for the restaurant scenes of the first act. Given the incredibly high level of every element of this production, it's a little remarkable that the production itself wasn't what got to me. 

What really impressed anew was that writing; Mamet's mystical alchemy that somehow allows all of those broken sentences, crude verbal punches, dirty words, angry, frustrated exclamations and pitiful self-justifications to reveal these characters so vividly, and with such insight. If ever there was proof that a play cannot exist on the page, but only on the stage, only in performance, this must be it. These miserably flawed, woefully inadequate real estate agents may be, to the man, guys we wouldn't want to know, but they are also guys filled with motivations and conflicts that, if we are honest, we can easily find in ourselves. The expertise of the performance and the production allows us to see beyond acting and design and to experience the real matter of what these guys do, and how what they do reveals who they are. That's dramatic writing. 

From the opening scene, when a desperate and all but defeated old pro, Shelly Levene, makes his pitch for better leads to the despised Office Manager, Williamson, the rule for playing this elaborate and ethically ungrounded game is clear; second place is the loser. John Aylward embodies the character of Levene; there is never a hint of artifice, only the fact of his being. MJ Sieber plays Williamson as an outsider, a guy who works the others, but doesn't really work with them. Charles Leggett plays the volatile Dave Moss with a combination of physical rage, emotional violence and personal devastation. As George Aaronow, Russell Hodgkinson takes the most apparently weak character and gives him a bottom-line, a limit to the extent to which he will compromise himself. That's not really an issue for Richard Roma, the salesman who is, to all appearances, on top of his game. R. Hamilton Wright plays Roma as a guy of imagination and finesse, thoroughly competent in manipulating people and making deals, a salesman who wastes none of his energy in combat with the others so that he can protect his own self-interests. When he sells worthless land to Lingk (Ian Bell) a hapless guy whose wife has second thoughts, there is never a sense that he's trying to hurt the guy, just to make sure his deal goes through. Nothing personal. Shawn Belyea also brings an attitude of nothing personal to the investigating cop, Baylen, who has to uncover the person responsible for breaking into the office and stealing important files.  

For me, a big part of Mamet's importance is in what he has to say about what it means to be a man, and how often being a man doesn't seem to mean anything at all. Very often, guys communicate with each other through all that they don't say, all that they can't say, and Mamet articulates that as precisely as anyone writing today. I wasn't that excited about coming back to his unhealthy and dangerous neighborhood for a visit, but with this production of “Glengarry Glen Ross” I returned to a place of authenticity and significance, places that cannot be avoided and that lead directly to where men really live.

PICTURED ABOVE: Hamilton Wright and John Aylward in Glengarry Glen Ross.
PHOTO BY: Chris Bennion