Get the latest gossip
‘You’re Wasting Leads’: Glengarry Glen Ross Returns
In this production starring Kieran Culkin, Bob Odenkirk, and Bill Burr, the heavy questions around David Mamet’s repugnant men go under-examined.
We can all debate the separation of art and artist until the cows turn blue in the face, but the Mamet of today casts a particularly queasy pall over his own corpus: Looking back, it’s hard to see plays like Glengarry Glen Ross— a kind of Death of a Salesman for the Reagan generation—fully as satires. Its presentation on the Palace’s wide stage is as neatly boxed in and meticulously decorated as any TV show’s set: In Act One, Scott Pask’s scenic design gives us every faux leather banquette and ornate hanging lantern of the kind of old Chinese restaurant where the menus were heavy green booklets and the drinks list started with a Mai Tai. The play’s first three scenes introduce us to each actor’s salesman in ascending office pecking order: Odenkirk as the old hand Shelley Levene, past his heyday and fighting for his life; Burr as the demonic, disgruntled Dave Moss, who’s trying to strongarm the waffling oldtimer George Aaronow (Michael McKean) into a scheme to rob their office and sell the loot to a rival firm; and Culkin as the hot young cock of the walk, Richard Roma, safely at the top of the sales board and, when we first meet him, long-gaming a big, sad-eyed bear of a mark named James Lingk (the excellent John Pirruccello) with the kind of schmoozy, seductively rambling promises of self-actualization that would impress the most conniving men’s-rights activist.
Or read this on VULTURE