GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS.
London.
GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS
by David Mamet.
Apollo Theatre.
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Wed & Sat 3pm.
Runs 1hr 40min One interval.
TICKETS: 0870 890 1101.
www.seeglengarry.com (booking fee by ‘phone and online).
Review: Timothy Ramsden 22 October.
Delightful, brutish and short: almost like life.
Have my ears become attuned to David Mamet’s stutteringly rapid-rattle dialogue or have things been toned-down for a large West End theatre? Even the (in)famous obscenities seem infrequent and (almost) inoffensive this time round.
At any rate, this is a cunning razor-strop of a play: harsh, sharp, and exhilarating with it. There’s not a generous sentiment in it; trick mounts upon deception among these real-estate dealers, eighties America’s latter-day salesmen of dream-homes faced with the deaths of their careers. Top dogs scream and demand; others fall desperately by the wayside into the poverty that’s a crime – and provokes crime – in the USA’s middle class.
This is notably the play of someone who scripted such fiendishly-plotted films as House of Games or The Spanish Prisoner. Three plots take root in the trio of restaurant scenes at the opening. Corruption, crime and exploitation ring hollow tones through the real-estate company echelons before resonating out to entice the innocent bystander.
Mamet repeatedly shows new faces of deception, while still leaving a surprise for the end among the multiplicity of secret, self-serving agendas within these walls. Behind the restaurant tables there’s a mountain scene; Anthony Ward’s design entices with more idylls between the play’s scenes, all illusory dreams to be sold for hard cash on commission.
James Macdonald’s production keeps a sense of briskness, and as failing salesman Shelly Levene Jonathan Pryce moves authoritatively between initial aggression, the humble-pie pleading into which it collapses when challenged, and the coarse triumphalism of a sales victory as illusory as the land he’s flogging. There’s nothing attractive about Levene, yet Pryce suggests the pathos of his situation, even when he willingly helps con a customer as ace-dealer Richard Roma’s stooge.
Aidan Gillen’s Roma starts soft as he steals in on his prey in the first act, showing his true, unmuted colours back at the office. For all the disarray following a break-in there, the salesmen notice nothing except their own concerns.
Finely-played throughout, this is a good chance to catch up with a major late-century US zeitgeist play, at once ruthlessly funny, and just plain ruthless too.
Shelly Levene: Jonathan Pryce.
John Williamson: Peter McDonald.
Dave Moss: Matthew Marsh.
George Aaronow: Paul Freeman.
Richard Roma: Aidan Gillen
James Lingk: Tom Smith.
Baylen: Shane Attwooll.
Director: James Macdonald.
Designer: Anthony Ward.
Lighting: Howard Harrison.
Dialect coach: Joan Washington.
Assistant director: Hannah Eidinow.
2007-10-23 00:39:15