A man that’s in it for the money is a bad, bad man – right? The value we attach to capital, and the beliefs of those who seek to do nothing other than accumulate it are issues that have always been hotly debated, perhaps now more than ever.
It would seem, then, an appropriate moment to bring back to the stage David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, a scorching play about the clawing desperation of a group of 1980s real estate salesmen walking the thin line between modest wealth and unemployment. It’s a mile-a-minute cacophony of swearing and lies, at once funny and despicable in its illumination of the turncoat tactics these examples of hyper-masculinity will adopt to save their jobs and turn a profit.
Glengarry Glen Ross was a sensation when it first hit the stage in 1984, applauded for its stark realism and unrelenting, brash dialogue. It won Mamet a Pulitzer, and audiences loved that it didn’t pull punches – what you saw was the way things really were in the money grabbing ‘80s. Fans thrilled at the amoral devises of men on the edge of both riches and failure; we quietly believed these characters to be a terrible necessity, an indispensable cog in the American market economy.
This Soulpepper production is a good one. Eric Peterson (Corner Gas) is at turns both endearing and despicable as the washed up Shelly “The Machine” Levine. He’s on his way out; eclipsed by younger, suppler salesmen. But he’s so quick to resort to base tactics and so bitter in his struggle, that any pity for his character gives way to pleasureas we watch and find unlikely humour in his inevitable demise.
Albert Scultz is also outstanding as Ricky Roma, a swindler at the peak of his game. He’s exploding with confidence, and takes pleasure in watching other men do battle for second place. Roma is quick to play the part of friend to both colleagues and customers, and just as quick to turn ugly and malicious once the camaraderie has served its purpose.
Half the fun of Glengarry Glen Ross is watching these men flip flop alliances and friendships the moment the other’s back is turned. It’s despicable behaviour, and yet there is something horribly attractive about the slickness of these men, and their total confidence in their own insincerity.
It’s a familiar story, and it’s easy to draw parallels to our current social predicament; there’s little need to go on about how the backhanded tactics in Glengarry Glen Ross mirror the moral and financial bankruptcy we see on Wall Street today. Suffice to say that director David Storch was banking on the majority of theatregoers arriving at this tidy analogy.
So if this tale of moral decay so closely resembles our own dire quagmire, why did it all feel vaguely adorable? Perhaps because, unlike today, the fierce competition in Glengarry Glen Ross is not for a bonus in the millions, but rather, a Cadillac. It’s almost endearing. Admittedly, much of the racism and misogyny still packs its former punch, as does the expletive-peppered language, but the scale of the swindling feels like a throwback to gentler times. In the play, deceptive men take innocents for everything their worth, but they do it one at a time. In today’s real-life version, men after money do their swindling by the billions, and they take the world down with them.
Glengarry Glen Ross is not so much a parable for the way things are today, but a reminder of just how much worse things have become. Soulpepper has put together a richly entertaining production, well-acted and staged, funny, and sharp in all the right places. And if it’s also unintentionally a little bit charming, when all is said and done, perhaps that’s not such a bad thing.
Glengarry Glen Ross, a Soulpepper production, runs until May 9. www.soulpepper.ca. Illustration by Soltron.
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