No question. Mamet is hard to pull off. But when it's done well, it can be amazing and mind-blowing.
Unfortunately, for much of the performance, the Lyric Stage Company of Boston's version of Mamet's Pulitzer-prize winning play Glengarry Glen Ross doesn't get there.
The story revolves around the Chicago real estate office of four salesman who are forced into a sales competition. The winner gets a Cadillac, the runner-up gets a set of steak knives, and the other two get fired. Mamet's play depicts the dreadful existence of salesmen through their dependence upon money, willingness to sacrifice anything to get it, and inability to communicate without trying to sell someone something.
The production has a promising opening. Pink Floyd's "Money," a perfect fit for the play, starts things off. Then the lights come up and the audience sees two men sitting in a booth at a Chinese Restaurant - the entire first half of the show takes here. To credit scene designer Janie Howland, the restaurant scenes are well-placed and the booth very real.
In the first scene Shelley "the machine" Levene (Ken Baltin) talks with John Williamson (Neil A. Casey). Levene is telling Williamson, the manager of the office, that he used to always be at the top of the sales list. In this scene, Levene is merciless - as only a desperate and disgruntled salesman could be - in his attack of Williamson, who the elder Levene sees as a white bread brat who has never really had to work.
Alas, anyone who sees the performance will be confused by this interpretation of the first scene because Mr. Baltin fails to assert Levene's dominance. It also seems that he missed some of the lines in which Levene repeats over and over that he has " brass balls" and Williamson does not. Without the introduction of this idea and with the faulty interpretation of Levene's character, the first scene ends with Williamson as the dominant character. This damages the role reversal at the end of the show, and what's more, it keeps the audience from feeling sympathy for Baltin's version of Levene.
Amazingly, the worst part of the first scene has not even been mentioned yet. The actors' obvious discomfort with Mamet's dialogue - commonly referred to as Mametspeak - is the most antagonizing part about the first conversation, and, to an even larger extent, the second conversation.
The first half of the play consists of three textbook examples of "Mametspeak" with words compiled into a seemingly splotchy, but actually well-calculated, rhythm. This suggests that words themselves actually have little value and, ultimately, must be spoken with no particular care. Along this same line, the meaning in Mametspeak can be found in what is not being said. Here lies the problem. The actors in these opening scenes treat the words with extra sensitivity to create the disjointed feeling of conversation, but the result of this effort is that the audience starts to feel the actors' awkwardness. It ends up looking like they lost their place.
In fairness to the actors, Spiro Veloudos's direction is mostly responsible for the lack of chemistry in these scenes. Luckily, the audience is spared another agonizing stumbling attempt at a pure Mametspeak dialogue in the first act's third scene. Ted Reinstein, who plays salesman Richard Roma, eloquently and diabolically delivers one of the finest-crafted monologues in modern drama.
Fortunately, Mr. Reinstein's excellent hold of his character and the dialogue foreshadows a much stronger second act which takes place in the office. Here in the office, Roma has more lines and the other actors feed off his energy. Mamet's play finds new life and the plot thickens when the audience realizes that someone has robbed the office.
As soon as the energy of the play starts to rise, however, the clouds start to gather, but this time in the form of a set error. The back office where the detective (Peter Darrigo) interviews each of the salesmen about the thief is made visible to the audience and the actors pantomime the interviews. This continuous scene - which is not in the script - only detracts from the action and dialogue in the main office. That is, until the audience learns to stop watching it, rendering it a waste of theater.
Despite these shortcomings, the show actually works for about a solid half-hour. The end, however, doesn't, and it's hard to tie together the two acts. The production gives Mamet a shot, and although it works for a while, neither the play nor the playwright is done justice.
