Pursuits
David Mamet's 'Glengarry Glen Ross' Speaks to the Price of Success
The office remains a brutal meritocracy in the Broadway revival of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross
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In Glengarry Glen Ross, an over-the-hill real estate salesman named Shelly Levene is trapped in a Catch-22. He can’t increase his sales with terrible “leads” (potential customers), and all the good ones go to those already pulling in big numbers. He solves this problem by selling Florida land to a couple with suspect credit. Yeah, this doesn’t end well.
David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which opened last month in a new Broadway revival starring Al Pacino as Levene, is one of the modern classics of American theater as well as one of the finest dramas about the price of business and pursuit of success. Mamet shows us wonderfully charged scenes of brass-knuckle negotiating but suggests the deals that really matter are offstage.