***Glengarry Glen Ross
Greed Is back, with a vengeance
Kieran Culkin and Bob Odenkirk. Photo: Emilio Madrid
How quickly the vituperations of yesteryear (in this case, 1983) lose their power to shock! The manner in which the desperate real estate hustlers curse each other out in this mean-spirited caper sounds downright quaint now, given the general coarsening that has trickled up into supposedly polite society. The real surprise lurking in David Mamet’s unrevised original script resides in the financials: All the key signifiers – the real estate values (even when bogus), the worth of a Cadillac bonus – remain frozen in the early ‘80s. Prepare for reverse sticker shock.
But now as then, there’s room for ageless genius in the predations of a shark like Richard Roma. Assuming the iconic role, Kieran Culkin hovers uncomfortably between the stealth-manipulations of Roman Roy in Succession and the alpha-predator savagery that Mamet clearly had in mind.
Culkin fares best in Act 1, set in a Chinese restaurant roomy as a convention hall (set by Scott Pask). Riffing existentially (his musings summon a whiff of absinthe), Roma easily inveigles a born mark (John Pirruccello, befuddled perfection) with a random peroration as hypnotic as it is off the wall. We’d never buy it, we tell ourselves smugly, but wow, feigned genius – in concert with the implied promise of camaraderie on top of profit – can be so seductive. Unfortunately, Culkin forfeits much of his mojo during Act 2: he even resorts to roostering up his hair, a gesture of frustration appropriate for a renegade Roy but not for a smoothie like Roma.
The one outlier in a generally skilled cast is Broadway newcomer Bob Odenkirk as Shelley Levene, a penny-ante macher on the skids. Sheeley’s high-pitched whine as he begs the office manager (John Williamson, restrained yet cagy) for “leads” would seem to preclude any kind of career, sales least of all. The casting is a curious choice on the part of director Patrick Marber, even if – in Mamet’s schema – Shelley is the predestined loser, the mark of all marks.
Michael McKeen is marvelous as the unflappable old-timer George Aaronow, who can barely get a word in as motormouth Dave Moss (comedian Bill Burr, seemingly born to the role) unspools his plan for an in-house robbery. Entering the final stretch of his career, George no longer much cares about making a killing. It’s the young, hungry ones you’ve got to look out for.
Even though Mamet’s language has lost much of its punch, the author – whose politics have done a 180 in the decades since – was on to something basic and ineluctable in human nature. Millennia upon millennia, century after century, there will always be marauders in it for the joy of the kill, however minimal the spoils. Also unflagging is the guilty pleasure that we other humans get to experience while watching them circle their prey.
Broadway, to June 28
