Glengarry Glen Ross Synopsis:
The Pulitzer Prize-winning drama follows a new boss
in a real estate firm, who tries to edge out some of
the firm's older salesmen by giving the better leads
to the younger reps. Through the sylized language of
the real estate industry, Mamet reveals how the older
men scheme to keep their jobs.
Cast List:
Alan Alda
Gordon Clapp
Jordan Lage
Liev Schreiber
Jeffrey Tambor
Frederick Weller
Tom Wopat
Production Credits:
Joe Mantello (Direction)
Santo Loquasto (Set Design)
Laura Bauer (Costume Design)
Kenneth Posner (Lighting Design)
Other Credits:
Written by: David Mamet
Cast and Director Mantello Praise
Mamet "Masterpiece" Glengarry Glen Ross
By Ernio Hernandez
19 Mar 2005
Busy Glengarry Glen Ross director Joe Mantello.
"Acting is sales." So says "Arrested
Development" star Jeffrey Tambor who is among a
number of failed salesmen-turned-actors who are honored
to portray salesmen in the starry cast of Broadway's
upcoming Glengarry Glen Ross revival.
Joe Mantello (Assassins, Take Me Out) takes on managerial
duties of the group as director for the upcoming David
Mamet revival. He was immediately sold on bringing back
the work that centers on the cutthroat world of real
estate.
"The writing of the play was too hard to resist,"
the two-time Tony Award winning director told Playbill.com
hours after the first read-through with the cast at
a March 15 press event. "I said to the guys today
we’ve all been fortunate enough to work on good
plays. But, every once in a while a masterpiece comes
along. And I do think of this as a masterpiece. They
are few and far between, but when they come along, seize
the moment with them."
For Mantello, part of the job was finding the right
ensemble of men to take on the mix of brazen and meeker
coworkers of the play. "We took a long time to
cast it because it’s like assembling a great orchestra.
You want every instrument to be completely in tune and
in synch with one another."
Among his all-male symphony are seasoned stage and
screen actors Alan Alda, Jeffrey Tambor, Liev Schreiber,
Gordon Clapp, Frederick Weller, Tom Wopat and Jordan
Lage. (Mantello jokingly justifies his testosterone-heavy
casts of late—Take Me Out, Assassins— with
his experience on The Vagina Monologues: "I’ve
banked a lot of hours with that.") All the aforementioned
actors share the director's respect for the Pulitzer
Prize-winning play and some share sales experience themselves.
One-time mutual funds pusher Alda boasted "I was
really glad that they were doing this play again because
I think it's one of the great plays in American theatre.
And I knew they wanted to get a real strong company.
You can't do this without a powerful acting company."
The "M*A*S*H" veteran and "The Aviator"
star continued, "When we sat down today, it was
so much fun to hear, just in the first reading, to hear
everybody start to cook. It was just wonderful."
Tambor, a shoe peddler prior to his acting career,
offers: "David Mamet is a home run hitter. What
a great time to be on Broadway, there's Mamet, there's
[Edward] Albee [playwright of the upcoming Who's Afraid
of Virginia Woolf?], there's David Rabe [playwright
enjoying his revised Hurlyburly Off-Broadway]. These
are the priests."
Mamet's Atlantic Theatre co-hort—and former used
clothing retailer—Lage concurred, "It's truly
one of the great plays in the American dramatic canon.
Not only that, it's just a fun play for actors to sink
their teeth into." Lage takes on Detective Baylen,
one of the two smaller, but pivotal roles in the work
with "Dukes of Hazzard" and Annie Get Your
Gun playing the other, James Lingk, the hesitant prey
of one salesman. "I realized I couldn't pass it
up," Wopat told Playbill.com. "The opportunity
to be in a cast of this stature and doing a play of
this import, it behooved me to do the right thing."
Fellow former telemarketers Clapp and Weller follow
suit in their regard of the work. "I was really
nervous," said Clapp who makes his Broadway debut
and return to the stage after more than a dozen years.
(He had a little decade-long television gig on "NYPD
Blue," which just wrapped its series finale.) Weller
compares the modern-day Bard to his well-known predecessor.
"It's the closest thing that the modern theatre
has to Shakespeare, I think. Mamet isn't the only modern
playwright who writes stylistically in a heightened
manner, but he's my favorite and the closest to Shakespeare
in that his rhythms are very masculine."
Schreiber, a steadfast stage actor familiar with the
Elizabethan Bard (having earned praise for his turns
in Othello, Hamlet and the recent Henry V), also examines
Mamet's grasp of language. "I think, of American
playwrights for me, he's one of the best. Like Pinter
did with English actors, Mamet's really been able to
sort of capture the idiosyncrasies and the rhythms and
the movements and the musicality of the American regionalisms
and I love that."
The actor cites the original 1984 production as one
of his first Broadway experiences — as does his
director Mantello. " I just thought it was amazing,"
Mantello recalls about the work, from the playwright
he spoke with in a recent phone conversation.
"He’s been very nice and generous,"
Mantello said of the lauded, but humble playwright.
"I said 'Do you want to say anything about the
play? Is there anything I should know?' And he goes,
'Ahh, I sorta like it.'"
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