“Glengarry Glen Ross” hits the ground running. Beginning mid-sentence, mid-argument, the tension that is evident when the lights first come up helps make this a darkly funny play to the very end.
The first act, set in a Chinese restaurant, presents a series of dining pairs. Each pair connects to the same real estate firm, where most of the characters work. The economy has started to sour, sales are slow and they have learned just that morning that at the end of the month the two salesmen with the lowest amount in sales will be fired.
Without many business days left, the harried salesmen are grabbing at any chance of a good lead on a potential client they can get. Shelley Levene (Jared H. Mercier), a Willy Loman-type salesman in the twilight of his career, desperately strikes a deal to buy better leads from a co-worker (Emily Darer), while the younger salesmen Dave Moss (Michael Bowles) and George Aaronow (Matt Mezzacampa), discuss a plan to rob and sell the firm’s leads to a rival company.
The morning after, the office is in shambles, the leads have been stolen and the staff tries to continue business as usual even while stepping out to be questioned by a police officer (Federico Trigo). The guilty parties are still present the next day, trying to act as if nothing has happened.
Although the first act plays well, “Glengarry Glen Ross” truly gels once act two begins. Unlike the first act’s pattern of pairing off characters separately, the entire cast is given the chance to interact fluently, and the varied representations fit together to form a coherent whole. Each character sets another up, and stress runs high as they walk right into dilemmas they neither expected nor know how to escape.
Bowles and Richard Roma (David Shapanka) butt heads repeatedly as rivals for the title of top salesman, each displaying a swaggering, cocksure attitude that says as much about their characters as it does of their well-earned security in their own abilities as actors. Shapanka boasts the play’s best outburst late in the second act, as he upbraids Darer’s character for killing the sale that would have made him top seller.
At first slow to reveal the full character of Shelley “The Machine” Levene, Mercier brings together the hapless character who draws the closest comparisons to Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.”
“Glengarry Glen Ross” has an air of economic insecurity that carries over for today’s audience, living through the United States’ current economic downturn.
Generic Theatre Company’s production of Mamet’s play bears more than a handful of positive signs for the student group. The straightforward, no-nonsense set matches perfectly with the actor’s characterizations, as they portray average people whose life is their business and are trapped watching their lives and livelihoods slip away from them.
