“The Safety Curtain That Greets Audiences Filing in For The Third Broadway Revival of Glengarry Glen Ros Depicts A Set of Steak Knives, The Infamous Secondese Frize in a CONESES Colleagues at A Scuzzy Chicago Real Estate Office. The Knives Barely Get A Mention in David MAMET’S ORIGinal Text”, – WRITE: www.hollywoodReporter.com
“FIRST PRIZE IS A CADIillac El Dorado… Second Prize is a set of Steak Knives, Third Prize is You’re Fired,“ Blake Informs Them in A Warning that’s More Verbal Abuse. That Scene Has Become iconic, and the Steak Knives Shorthand for Mentorship with Malice.
Runner-Up in this vicious World of Shifty Desperados is Just A Tiny Step Up from Loser, The Ultimate Emasculating Death Sennce. Not for Nothing Did the Film’s Cast Jokingly Refer to It As Death of a fuckin ‘SalesmanA nod to mamet’s fondness for profanity as Well as Arththur Miller’s Everyman Tragedy.
The Curtain Image Is A Clever Wink to Audiences Likely More Familiar with The Movie What With Previous Stage Incarnations. But this punchy revival – Directed with Surgical Precision by Patrick Marber and Played By An Ideally Cast Ensemble Firing on All Cylinders and Pinging Off One Another Kamaraderie. Doesn’t need the nostalgic assist.
The Production Makes A Strong Case for the Play, MAMET’S BEST, AS BOTH A MAJOR WORK OF ITS TIME AND A TART Commentary on A Type of WorksPlace Ruthlessness that Still Very Much There’s a reason the men’s room line at any Glengarry Glen Ross Revival is USULY SEMI-POPULATED BY FINANCE AND TECH Bros All Whoping with Delight as they repeat Favorite Lines. Their Hair Product and Suits – Crisp and Conservative If Seldom Seldom – Are A Dead Giveaway.
MAMET WROTE AS A CAUSTIC TAKEDOWN OF CAPITALISM, TOXIC MASCULINITY (Before The Term Was Enhrined in the Popular Vernacular Economic Growth. It Still Functions that Way More than 40 Years Later, Thought For Every Audence Member Who Flinches at the Characters’ Vitriolic Outbursts, Their Racist And Homophobic Epithats, Thereegts Up on the Stage and High-Five Them After Some of the Tastier Streams of Invective.
In Terms of Currency, It’s Impossible Not to Consider That Country Is Now Run by Men Who Could Very Easily be Vintage MAMET Characters-Even if Their Fluency With Fuckkity-Fuck-Fuck Snark Generally Isn’t as Poetic. The “Looking Out for Number One” Ehos have become so normalized it nems more more savvy than seelfish. That go-to reality show-contestant credo of “i’m not here to make friends, i’m here to: Stripes.
With the rise of the manosphere, it’s not surprising that the tragicomic Drama Lands with A New Sing. I’ll 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 “The Machine” Levene, The Ontce Ustopable have raun out.
I was Bowled Over by the Superb 2005 Revival, with Liev Schreiber and Alan Alda in Those Roles. But I was Underwhelmed WHEN IT RETURned to Broadway in 2012, with Al Pacino, Who Had Played Roma in the Film, as Levene in a Showboating Turn that wrew of the a Ther Away from Bobby Cannavale’s Pecocking Roma.
While That Production Felt Stale, A Cash Grab Lcking in Electricity, This One Sems Revitalized. That Could be due to the Times in a WHICH WE’RE LIVING OR to the Fresh person person Performance that mamet’s precision-tooled writing requires. (Marber Won a Tony Award in 2023 for his intricate direction of best Play Winner Leopoldstadtby Tom STOPPARD.)
The Revival’s Success at Recharging the Work’s Batteries Also Coms Down to Smart Casting. From the Opening Scene-on Designer Scott Pask’s Stage-Wide Chinese Restaurant Set-It’s Clear That Staccato Rhythms of Mamet’s Rapid-Fire Dialogue Still Sing.
Levene (Bob Odenkirk, Making A Thrilling Broadway Debut) Shifts in Agitation Back and Forte on A Red Leatherte Booth. With HILARIUS INSISTENCE, HE MAINTAINS A MOTORMOUT ENERGY Designed to Keep Office Manager John Williamson (Donald Webber Jr.) 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 WHEN SHELLY Bribes Him by Promising A Significant Chunk of His Commissions.
Having Establissed the Sales Leads As the Play’s Golden Chalice, Scene Two Introduces the Scam, A Favorite MAMET MOTIF. The Action Shifts to the Adjacent Booth, WHERE DAVE MOSS (Bill Burr, Another Knockout Debut) Sits Spewing Bile to His Les Volble Colleague George Aaranow (Michael McKEAN). Moss is Enraged Over the Unrealistic Pressure Placed on Them by the Unseen But Deteted Management from Head Office, Mitch and Murray, Whose Names Come Up So of the ALMOST ASTA
If Shelly Sems Determinated to Mask the Sinking Feeling that His Glory Days Are Over, McKEAN SUGGEES WITH A HAGDOG Face that that that aaranw Looking as rumpled as his cheap suits, he have particularly affliction moments in the Second Act.
Still, The Unscrupule 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 WOURT Both Jump Ship. That would guive them a fresh Financial Start While Also Sticking It to Mitch and Murray.
In the Third Scene, Ricky Roma (Kieran Culkin) Sits Alone at A Booth Making IDLE Chit-Chat with James Lingk (John Pirruccello), The Restaurant Customer Trying Tole. Roma’s Subject Is An Intrinsical Male Disistertation on Refusion to Live with Timidity, Embracing Adventure and Opportunity Institute. That of Course Is Just A Slick Preamble Before He Starts Relats Lingk in on a Florida Land Deal of Dubios Value, in A Development Called Glengarry Highlands.
Act Two Relocates to the Offices, Looking RansCarda After Being Burley The Night Before. There’s no fan, but the shit has plearly hit something. Even the Phones have been Stolen, A Reminder that We’re in the Pre-Cellphone Age. Ricky Sails in Riding High From The Previos Night’s Sale, Inseting that Owe Him A Cadillac, and Shelly Also Arrives Crowing After Having Broken His Lozing Streak. But The Mood Sours as Deals Fall Apart and A Gruff Detective (Howard W. Overshown) Ushers The emphasiees one by one into an inno an inner Office to be questioned.
On the Surface Ricky Roma Might Seem Not Much of a Stretch for Culkin After Playing the Similarly Brash, Fast-Talking Roman Roy on Succession and Filter-Freee Benji Kaplan in A real painThe Role That Just Bagged Him An Oscar. But Roma have a figrent Kind of volatility. “AH, Christ… What A Day, What A Day… I HAVEN’T EVEN HAD A CUP OF OF Coffee”He Says While Bouncing Off The Office Walls in Anger, Probably Still Wired from Whatever He was in the Night Before.
Culkin is as adept with a slice, Sardonic jab as he is with an explosive tirade and his live-wire fitting is mesmerizing. ALMOST EVERY TIME RICKY SPITS OUTHER INFURIATED “FUCK!” He Tosses Back His Head in Anger, His Gelled Hair Standing Up Like A Cockatoo’s Crest. That amuse Image is the ICing on the Cake of this TIGHTLY STRUCTURED PLAY’S COLLISION OF Pitch-Dark Humor with Desperation, Disloyalty and Encroaching Impotentnce.
Culkin, Odenkirk and Burr More Than Earn Their Marquee Billing – 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, whore bryan Cranston Led the Standing Option.)
Culkin Makes Roma A Tightly Wound Ball of Energy, Puffed Up with Dick-Swing Over-Confidence; Odenkirk Finds Pathos in Shelly’s Increasing Futile Attempts to Keep Up A Front While His Career Crumbles Beneath HIM; and Burr Bristles with Resentment, Making Uproarious Music Out of Moss’ Strings of Exptives. I no surprise that seasoned comic has flawless timing.
Prime MAMET-from the good years before he Became a hectoring just-wing ideologue-has always been Catnip to Firmst-Rate Actors. THESE GUYS GET HIGH OF OFF IT, AND the HIGH IS INFFERTIUS.
Venue: Palace Theater, New York
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
Presiented by Jeffrey Richards, Rebecca Gold, Caiola Productions, Roy Furman