GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS reviews thread

[The Distinctive Baritone]

Posted: 5/1/05 at 6:47pm

I'll start. Here's Broadway.com's. It's quite positive.

http://www.broadway.com/gen/Buzz_Story.aspx?ci=511370

[jjdude2000]

Posted: 5/1/05 at 6:48pm

I started one already

Oh well

[The Distinctive Baritone]

Posted: 5/1/05 at 6:49pm

I think we did it at like, the exact same time, actually. Great minds think alike

[jjdude2000]

Posted: 5/1/05 at 6:49pm

Yea they do.

[pab]

Posted: 5/1/05 at 7:34pm

"The production's finest moment is between the two in the second act, when Lingk attempts to renege on the deal they made the day before: Both men's pain, spoken and unspoken, and the threats they make to each other, stated and implied, are played out in their eyes and their physicality first, and their words second, creating the kind of palpable tension that should imbue every scene in the play.

This slow-burn subtlety, even while delivering and receiving rapid-fire insults and gentle verbal caresses, is what Glengarry Glen Ross, like most of Mamet's works, is really about. The showiness of the other performances and Mantello's direction, which is alternately sluggish and overly presentational, cheapens and dilutes the harsh reality that Mamet presents. Men, Mamet argues here, cannot and must not be tamed.

Mantello's attempts to do so have resulted in a Glengarry Glen Ross that's closer in feel to an hourlong TV drama than a gripping glimpse of the castrating environment in which the play is set. Still, at least Schreiber and Wopat are on hand to remind the men in the audience - and everyone else - of the chilling, insightful possibilities of theatre they'll never find down the street at Steel Magnolias."
Talkin Broadway

Updated On: 5/1/05 at 07:34 PM

[thirdrowcenter]

Posted: 5/1/05 at 8:15pm

The show came alive when Liev Schreiber was onstage. Deliciously evil. He has the best role and he is spectacular.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/1/05 at 8:36pm

Theatremania is Positive:

Were David Mamet writing Glengarry Glen Ross today and setting his shrewd dramatist's eye on four devious real estate operators, he'd have to pen a different play. The ubiquity of the cell phone would change how these conniving salesmen do business. It's unlikely that they'd lunch in a nearby Chinese restaurant, as they do in Mamet's economical first act, without being interrupted by anxious prospects or motivated to make urgent outgoing calls. And in the energized second act -- when you can almost hear the playwright chuckling as he makes life tough for his calculating characters -- these desperadoes wouldn't be at a loss for land-line phones in their burglarized office.
Viewed from this perspective, Glengarry Glen Ross -- which debuted at London's National Theatre in 1983 and opened on Broadway in early 1984 -- is dated. But in every other way, Mamet's excoriating drama is up to the minute as it sticks figurative needles into businessmen and, by extrapolation, into American corporate practices. "We are the members of a dying breed," says Richard Roma (Liev Schreiber), the slickest of the morally-challenged lot. He thereby establishes the drama's homage to Death of a Salesman, the other great beleaguered-businessman play of the 20th-century. Roma's verbal knell may even be more pertinent than ever in today's gravely compromised political atmosphere.

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Mantello is equally successful with the cast. While the director may slightly overplay the playwright's first movement -- er, first act -- he hits a pace-perfect tempo as the dark second-act fireworks ignite. The actors astonish, the more so because everyone of them is doing something he hasn't before. Alan Alda uses his familiar high nasal twang to make Shelly Levene a classic whiner; whenver he's cornered, he bleats, "My daughter!" Liev Schreiber adds to his gallery of spot-on characterizations. This wily actor always finds some telling physical gesture to pounce on; watch his flexing foot when he's baiting Tom Wopat's Lingk. As for Wopat -- who's recently strutted through Annie Get Your Gun, 42nd Street, and Chicago -- his may be the biggest change-of-pace. Even without a cap, he turns Lingk into a nondescript hat-in-hand fellow. Or maybe it's Gordon Clapp, graduating from 12 years as the soft-hearted Greg Medavoy on NYPD Blue, who does the smartest about-face with his loud-mouth, resentful Dave Moss. Frederick Weller and Jeffrey Tambor also bring new colors -- opaque gray and mousy brown, respectively -- to their roles.

The Drama Desk has already announced an out-of-competition award to the Glengarry Glen Ross ensemble. The honor is deserved (and might also have been given to the cast of Mamet's downtown click, Romance). As Linda Loman says at the end of Death of a Salesman, attention must be paid. Otherwise, one should expect dire consequences, as David Mamet makes frighteningly clear."




http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/5970

[Caroline-Q-or-TBoo]

Posted: 5/1/05 at 9:16pm

i love Mantello.
i read the play and wasnt wild about it. but i have hopes

[Plum]

Posted: 5/1/05 at 9:18pm

This is one of the few cases where I'm thinking, "I saw the movie, so why should I see this?" The film was an all-star production and appeared to be such a close adaptation of the play, I'm going to need some convincing to shell out the money to see it live.

[thirdrowcenter]

Posted: 5/1/05 at 10:13pm

Does anyone know who played Liev Schreiber's (Richard Roma) role in the movie?

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/1/05 at 10:16pm

Pacino

[The Distinctive Baritone]

Posted: 5/1/05 at 10:43pm

Come on people...any more?

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/1/05 at 10:44pm

Variety is a rave:

Unlike other celebrated plays of the 1980s, this stinging swim through the shark tank of a Chicago real estate office has only sharpened its currency two decades on, and in his crackling revival, director Joe Mantello and an exceptionally well chosen cast bring exacting detail to every bruising observation of a playwright in peak form.
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A production even finer than the season's other all-male ensemble piece, "Twelve Angry Men," this smart, energetic revival continues the formidable run of Mantello, whose work in the past three seasons on such diverse shows as "Take Me Out," "Wicked," "Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune," "Assassins" and Mario Cantone's "Laugh Whore" confirms an astonishing range, consistency and implicit trust in his material, unequaled among his peers.
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117926943?categoryid=1265&cs=1

[QueenMuppet]

Posted: 5/1/05 at 10:56pm

Very positive comments so far, I'm very happy.

QM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/1/05 at 11:06pm

AP is Positive:

"More than two decades after it first arrived on Broadway, "Glengarry Glen Ross," David Mamet's scabrous, yet often hilarious look at the underbelly of the American Dream, has lost none of its sting.

This powerhouse revival, which opened Sunday at Broadway's Royale Theatre, scorches, thanks to superb performances down the line. The seven actors _ Alan Alda, Liev Schreiber, Frederick Weller, Tom Wopat, Gordon Clapp, Jeffrey Tambor and Jordan Lage _ define what it means to be an ensemble.
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Mamet's story is slight, yet effective, eventually turning into a genuine whodunit. But there's more to be savored, too, especially those colorful characters, urban pirates of commerce who disdain the humdrum world of normal business.

As Roma describes that gray existence: "It's not a world of men ... It's a world of clock watchers, bureaucrats, officeholders ... there's no adventure to it." In this "Glengarry Glen Ross," the adventure of selling shady real estate seems obscenely exhilarating."




AP REVIEW

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/1/05 at 11:23pm

USA Today gives it Three Stars:

"In the new production, Alan Alda is cast as Shelly Levene, a former hot shot whose fortunes and stature have sagged. As played by Lemmon, Levene was a sad creature whom we instinctively rooted for, even knowing that his case was hopeless. Alda's interpretation is somewhat more abrasive, but ultimately makes Levene's desperation, and his doom, just as palpable.

Frederick Weller puts a similarly distinctive spin on the role of John Williamson, the acerbic upstart whom Levene and his colleagues report to. Looking fresher and greener than Spacey did on screen, Weller plays Williamson more as an ambitious frat boy with a mean streak.

The best reason to check out this Glengarry, though, is Liev Schreiber, whose take on the crude but slick sales ace Ricky Roma is both scarier and more seductive than Pacino's was. Schreiber's Roma is a natural-born player and predator; whether he's buttering up Levene or ensnaring a potential client, you're fascinated and repelled by him — and grateful that he isn't trying to sell you anything.

Like Schreiber, director Joe Mantello recognizes the dangerous allure contained beneath Mamet's staccato rhythms and scathing retorts. In the first act, three scenes that each feature a different pair of actors evoke the mating rituals of vicious, carnivorous animals, with one party playing the aggressor as the other succumbs.

Gordon Clapp is briskly funny as one aggressor, while Jeffrey Tambor and Tom Wopat are convincingly pathetic as two of the victims who don't have what it takes to compete in the game that is life according to Mamet.

However grisly that game can get, this Glengarry reaffirms that it can make an entertaining spectator sport."

http://www.usatoday.com/life/theater/reviews/2005-05-01-glengarry_x.htm

[The Distinctive Baritone]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 1:09am

Brantley's review is up from the NY Times:

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/theater/reviews/02glen.html?

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 1:19am

Brantley made it a critic's pick:

"Who needs caffeine when you've got "Glengarry Glen Ross"? Watching Joe Mantello's high-octane revival of David Mamet's play about a dog-eat-dog real estate office in Chicago feels like having espresso pumped directly into your bloodstream.

This transfixingly acted production, which opened last night at the Royale Theater, leaves you with a case of happy jitters that may keep you up hours past bedtime. But what's a little lost sleep when you've had the chance to see and hear a dream-team ensemble, including Alan Alda and Liev Schreiber, pitching fastball Mamet dialogue with such vigor, expertise and pure love for the athletics of acting?"
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The danger in performing Mamet these days is that he has become so widely known, so endlessly imitated. It takes a careful, skillful ensemble to render his characters without making them sound like jacked-up dirty robots. Making them sound spontaneous requires something like brilliance. Which is indeed what is achieved by the protean Mr. Mantello (who won Tonys for "Take Me Out" and "Assassins") and the actors playing Mr. Mamet's band of backstabbers."

[pab]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 1:22am

Wow, very good reviews for this production. Can't wait to see it.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 1:38am

Newark Star-Ledger is a Rave:

Opening yesterday at the Royale, director Joe Mantello's masterful production of "Glengarry Glen Ross" makes the most of a powerhouse ensemble of seven actors. There is not a weak link in this barbed-wire chain of acting excellence.

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Successfully navigating the tightly meshed rhythms and echoing cadences of Mamet's dialogue while maintaining a character is tricky business. But under Mantello's typically sharp, discerning direction, the company pulls off this risky high-wire act with the greatest of ease. So naturally does everybody breeze through the piece that probably only later will viewers recognize how stylized the play really happens to be.

Santo Loquasto's ultra-real settings, Laura Barnes' 1980s clothes and Kenneth Posner's at times merciless lighting are first-class components of a major revival. Altogether, "Glengarry Glen Ross" is a lean, mean and very keen triumph.

http://www.nj.com/entertainment/ledger/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-0/1115009909178400.xml

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 2:11am

The Washington Post is a Rave:

The funny, quicksilver revival that opened last night at the Royale Theatre throws juicy bone after bone to half a dozen ravenous actors who chew each down greedily to the marrow. In the short, cutting vignettes of the first act and the longer scene that envelops the entire ensemble in the second, they hurl Mamet's insults and epithets at one another with venomous precision. The banter is so callous and sardonic, you could sit through it happily all day.
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More rewarding still is Alan Alda's grandly comic turn as Shelly Levene, the glad-handing former high earner whose eagerness to climb back on top smells ever more pathetically of desperation. Best of all, however, is the remarkable Liev Schreiber, in the most seductive performance he's given to date. His Richard Roma, the shark in the starched white collar, is every repulsively overconfident salesman you've ever had the misfortune to lock eyes with, the sort whose spiel instantly has you scanning the room nervously for the nearest exit.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/01/AR2005050101120.html

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 2:39am

Clive Barnes (NY Post) gives it Three-and-a-half Stars:

"Mamet's beautifully crafted play — it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 — flawlessly staged by Joe Mantello, with its all-male cast offering the best acting on Broadway and drawing blood, guts and laughter along the way."

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"The characterization is American theater at its finest, with the two contrasted leads, the elderly and weary Shelly ("The Machine") Levene and the youthfully brash Richard Roma, being simply two of the greatest roles in 20th century theater.

The play was beautifully staged and performed at its world premiere with Britain's National Theatre, but proved less effective a year later on its first Broadway outing, originating in Chicago.

This new production seems definitive.

Mantello's staging, as smooth as satin with a Velcro fastening, hits every note.

Alda plays Shelley as a shabby circus tiger at bay, but one with memories of past glories, ignited when he describes to Roma, with almost orgasmic pleasure, the ecstasy of his one last great deal.

The evening is nevertheless dominated by Schreiber's cutthroat sharp Roma, immaculate in his slightly too smart suits (telling costumes throughout by Laura Bauer), whose self-reverence is as apparent in the way he shoots his cuffs as in his imperial finger gestures.

The rest of the cast is also first-rate, from Frederick Weller's icy and cool snake of an Office Manager, to the conniving, blowhard Dave of Gordon Clapp, the piteously defeated George of Jeffrey Tambor and the ineffectual, emasculated dupe James of Tom Wopat.

The play is all the better this second Broadway time around."


http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/43378.htm

[pooryorick]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 9:16am

As I thought when I saw it last week and as much as I hate making predictions, I would gamble that Liev Schreiber will be taking home the Best Actor Tony. As solid as O'Byrne is (aside from that odd Bronx accent) and interesting as Irwin might be (same with Alda and Goldblum), it's Liev's year.
Updated On: 5/2/05 at 09:16 AM

[magruder]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 12:21pm

From Clive Barnes' review:

"The play was beautifully staged and performed at its world premiere with Britain's National Theatre, but proved less effective a year later on its first Broadway outing, originating in Chicago."

I'm sure the National's production was excellent, but must he denigrate the terrific original Broadway/Goodman Theatre production? Joe Mantegna and Robert Prosky were sensational - a highlight of my '80s theatregoing.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 1:50pm

Magruder,
I agree completely. Although it's been 20 years, I found myself having a hard time forgetting Mantegna's dynamic performance as Roma as I watched the current revival. While Schreiber is certainly one of our greatest actors, for me, Mategna still IS Roma. Mantegna, Prosky and the rest of the Chicago-based Mamet pros which made up the OBC had an effortlessly mastery over Mamet's staccato rhythms and profane poetry that was simply electrifying to witness. The revival cast, under the direction of Mantello, in contrast, I found approached the material with a degree of bluntness and lack of finesse which muted the impact of some of the humor. It's a decent revival, but, IMO, it doesn't approach the original.