In Mamet’s coiled spring of a play, four real-estate agents are locked in a battle for survival. Each month as they compete to sell plots of undesirable land, the man with the biggest sales wins a Cadillac and the man with the smallest gets the sack.
This month’s man on top is Ricky Roma (Richard Dormer). Slick and cocksure Roma sees his success a mark of virility. But it’s not all god-given, he admits to his colleague Shelly Levene whose own prowess once inspired him. Down on his luck and fleeing the label of yesterday’s man, Levene (David Fleeshman) is desperate to make a sale by any means possible. David Moss (John McAndrew) is sick of the pressure the agency places on them and plans to take revenge by stealing its clients, a plan he talks the gullible George Aaronow (James Quinn) into enacting for him.
Roma’s admission to Levene is the only moment of tenderness in a muscular script which takes repartee as its default setting. Only on a few occasions in the stifling first act does the dialogue eschew the smart talk – like Roma’s dazzling sales pitch masquerading as homily on fate and personal responsibility made all the more enjoyable by Richard Dormer’s sawing performance. In the first half the rest of the cast seemed unable to shrug off a certain reverence for the script that left Mamet’s hand-wringing dialogue wilting. Judith Croft’s otherwise excellent Chinese restaurant set didn’t help in placing the actors far downstage, with little room to move from their chairs else they might fall into the front row.
It’s not until the second act that this production comes into its own. As Moss’s scheme unravels and the entire staff of the agency is implicated, the underlying resentments, barely hidden before, are monstrously laid bare and extravagant insults and accusations fly. The snug staging of the first act, it is revealed, is to allow room for an extensive office room set, impressively drab with stained ceiling tiles and rickety furniture. With more room to manoeuvre the cast can get down to some serious door slamming and bashing of filing cabinets. The play comes to life and the audience marvel at the gushing bile. Eventually, from the scrum, the culprits are identified in a conclusion with more pathos than we might expect.
The posters for Glengarry Glen Ross show a man concealing a knife reaching out as if to shake hands. And although none of the chancers and sharks featured here physically stabs anyone in the back, it’s a metaphor for the sense of peril that surrounds their working lives. In the second act that desperation explodes like blood from a wound. It might take its time to get going but this powerful play still packs a punch.