Mamet's "Glengarry Glen Ross" Returns to Broadway....Starring WHO???

[Pink Freud]

Courtesy of today's New York TImes:

Kieran Culkin, boosted to stardom by his role as a scheming son of a media titan in “Succession,” will be featured alongside Bob Odenkirk, the “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul” alumnus, and Bill Burr, one of today’s most successful standup comics.

The production — which will be the fourth “Glengarry” outing on Broadway — is to be directed by Patrick Marber, a Tony Award winner for Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt.”

“Glengarry” is one of the plays that solidified David Mamet’s reputation as a great American dramatist. It is an ensemble drama, set in a Chinese restaurant and a real-estate office, about a group of desperate salesmen competing for priceless leads to market virtually worthless real estate lots at Glengarry Highlands and Glen Ross Farms to unwitting buyers.

The play arrived on Broadway in 1984, and it won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama that same year. It was adapted as a film in 1992, directed by Mamet with a cast led by Al Pacino, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey, Jonathan Pryce, and Jack Lemmon. Crucially, the infamous role of the "sales manager from downtown", portrayed for only ten onscreen minutes by a terrifyingly abusive Alec Baldwin, was created exclusively for the movie.

The play was revived on Broadway in 2005, with Alan Alda and Liev Schreiber, and again in 2012, with Pacino and Bobby Cannavale.

David Mamet wrote the play after he worked as, essentially, Kevin Spacey's character in a real estate office, distributing leads and saving sales from clients experiencing buyer's remorse. For those who have never seen/heard a Mamet script --- strongly suggested: "House of Games", starring Joe Mantegna and Mamet's then-wife Lindsay Crouse --- it's unlike anything anywhere else, often employing the same actors of his troupe in several different films, such as Ricky Jay; William H. Macy; his wives Crouse and Rebecca Pidgeon; Mike Nussbaum, et al.

From imdb.com: "(Mamet's) Characters speak in quick rapid-fire succession, frequently cutting each other off, finishing each other's sentences, and repeating themselves whilst the other speaks. Most notably, every word the character speaks (or doesn't speak) is actually scripted including stammers, pauses, repeated words, half utterances, etc. Ad libbing or improvised dialogue is never permitted."

Personal note: If you've never worked as a straight commission sales rep, this play/movie is a pretty good prediction of what you'll encounter. And yes....I had a sales manager just like Alec Baldwin's.