Glengarry Glen Ross: High-Tempo Testosterone
David Mamet is often considered the godfather of machismo, his works populated by the manliest men to ever grace stage and screen. The ‘Mamet Man’ is a chest-thumping, fast-talking, swaggering force of nature, and this is never more evident than in his masterpiece *Glengarry Glen Ross*, currently being staged by Toronto’s "Soulpepper Theatre Company":http://www.soulpepper.ca/. In Mamet’s world you’re either predator or prey, and it’s thrilling to watch his characters battle it out to decide which category they fall into.
Director David Storch has a superb cast to attack Mamet’s script about a team of Reagan-era real estate salesmen clawing over each other to survive in an unforgiving world. The team of veteran salesmen are challenged by a workplace competition where success is rewarded by a shiny new Cadillac, failure with an immediate pink slip. It becomes swiftly evident during a series of scheming encounters in a seedy Chinese restaurant, that the characters will do whatever it takes to get to the mantle of top dog in the office hierarchy. Once deals are made and plots hatched, the action moves to their burglarized office and an investigation into which of our unscrupulous heroes would have been willing to go so far for success.
Albert Schultz struts across the stage as champion salesman Ricky Roma, full of smarmy self-confidence and gregarious charm. Young, skilled and at the top of his game, he revels in his self-assurance and patronizes his elder competitors. William Webster gives excellent hand-wringing as the hapless George Aaronow, constantly at the mercy of his more savvy peers. Eric Petersen continues his seamless transition from Corner Gas to the stage as past-his-prime Shelly Levine, who refuses to let go of his memories of the glory days and wheedles, pleads and rages to avoid his fate. The sales team is completed by Peter Donaldson, hitting a home run as bigoted, spittle-spewing puppetmaster Dave Moss. Rounding out the cast is Jordan Pettle as the besieged office manager Williamson, Stephen Guy-McGrath as Detective Baylen and Kevin Bundy as James Lingk, the neutered antithesis of Mametian masculinity and victim of Roma’s charisma.
The ensemble do an admirable job of keeping up with the high energy of Mamet’s script, alternately puffing up and deflating as necessary, spewing enough obscenities to make Tarantino blush. I am not a Mamet Man by any measure, but just watching a performance of this caliber caused stirrings in my reptilian brain, and I definitely walked out of the theatre with my shoulders squared and a bit of fire in my belly. At a talkback after the show Webster commented that “Mamet affects how you move through the day like no other playwright”, after a series of anecdotes detailing how the actors experienced heightened aggressiveness in their day to day lives.
Webster also disclosed that Glengarry had originally been slated for a previous Soulpepper season, only to be set aside for a future staging. The parallels of a real estate market in flux and tough economic times is impossible to ignore today, and Webster posited that pushing the performance back one year resulted in it likely being read in a completely different matter. Though Mamet wrote the script in 1982 based off of experiences he had in sales in the sixties, the content is ominously relevant. It requires no stretch of the imagination to picture professionals in any competitive market today doing whatever morally compromising things it takes to survive in the face of daunting odds.
Ken MacDonald’s set design captured the ambiance of each act; for the first half we’re in a dimly lit eatery full of shadows for underhanded dealings, in the second the post-burglary office. The scattered papers and toppled furniture of the latter add an extra challenge to the performers, who must negotiate the devastation while still dominating their environment through sheer force of will. Of an especially creative note is the backdrop, with both scenes framed by towering walls made of blackboard slate. In the restaurant they form the menu with prices and dollar signs scrawled from floor to ceiling, and in the office they’re the oft-referenced ‘board’ that catalogues the successes and failures of the salesmen for all to see.
Renowned for its insights into the male psyche and the pressures of the hunter/gatherer archetype, Glengarry should be seen by everyone at least once. Sure, you could go out and rent the film, but I highly recommend getting the bile and bravado firsthand from Soulpepper while you can.
_Glengarry Glen Ross, produced by Soulpepper Theatre Company; Written by David Mamet; Directed by David Storch; Set Design by Ken MacDonald; Performed by Kevin Bundy, Peter Donaldson, Stephen Guy-McGrath, Eric Peterson, Jordan Pettle, Albert Schultz and William Webster. Playing at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts from April 2 – May 9; for more information go_ "here":http://www.soulpepper.ca/