Thank You Kindly, Mamet

Though I've read and seen a lot of plays, I'd somehow never got around to the very well-known Glengarry Glen Ross, by David Mamet (neither the original play nor the film adaptation). I rectified this situation last night, going back to the Denver Center Theater Company (the group also performing the wonderful Noises Off right now) to see their new production.

This is a very enjoyable play. It's stuffed to bursting with the signature David Mamet style of dialogue -- lots of quick patter, characters interrupting one another and shutting down attempts to be interrupted, copious (but precise) use of cursing, and loads more lurking in the subtext.

I've heard the film version is different in several ways, significantly in that it tries harder to paint some of the characters as sympathetic. In the play, I didn't find any of them particularly so. I felt the audience was kept at arm's length, as if to sit there and say, "man, these people...." But this approach was a very good one for the play, and provoked a lot of discussion afterward between me and the person I went with. I was less drawn in emotionally, but more deeply drawn in intellectually.

The story seems a particularly appropriate one to be telling right now, given the financial/housing crisis in the U.S. It's a mid-1980s tale of greed, about sleazy salesmen pushing worthless property on easy marks. They work over clients and each other in this furiously paced story.

This production was even faster than the norm, as the traditionally two-act play was presented in 90 minutes without intermission. Having seen it this way, I can scarcely imagine it with the break. It just worked so well for the story to plunge ahead without leaving the audience time to think, just as the salesman plunge ahead and don't leave their marks time to think as they're coerced into a deal.

The cast was quite good, but of course much of the discussion I had with my friend after the show was about which famous actors played which roles in the film adaptation. I must say, that movie now goes on "The List"; I most definitely want to catch it on DVD at some point.

In any case, I've had two consecutive great Friday nights at the theater.