Ixion makes the sale with Glengarry
The five men in Glengarry Glen Ross are not the co-workers anyone would wish to have. Nor are they the people you want to buy real estate from. What they are is a dismal picture of what the “American Dream” has descended to in the eyes of David Mamet.
Glengarry Glen Ross at Ixion
Ixion in Lansing is undertaking this Mamet classic in the The Robin Theater, a new venue for the company. In the new space, the company captures all the harshness of Mamet’s play and the amoral nature of the characters.
Directed by Jeff Croff, the play’s natural language style careens from one moment to the next, with actors constantly speaking over one another and in fits and starts the way Mamet wrote them too. The cramped staging contributes to the sense of these men walking all over each other with no regard for personal dignity.
Spurred on by a sales contest in which the top two salesmen get prizes and the rest get fired, these salesmen are desperate to “get on the board” and to get the premium leads that are mostly likely to turn into sales.
Returning to the stage after a several year hiatus is Daryl Thompson as Levene “the Machine.” Thompson captures the broken soul of this down-on-his-luck salesman. He tells us a man is his job and if that is true, he is a washed-up has-been who is no longer able to close the way he used to. He talks fervently and desperately about his glory days, and slowly reveals the broken man he is. It’s a stellar performance from a fine actor.
David Bilbey also puts in a strong performance as Roma, the slick salesman riding a wave who doesn’t hesitate to lie, cheat and befuddle his customers. He opens his appearance in the play with a strong monologue that overwhelms Lingk (Kris Vitols) into buying property he doesn’t want. Later, he’s the king of the office as the top salesman on the board, the one who is going to win the Cadillac.
Scheming and bitter, Adam Bright’s Moss railroads his co-workers into seeking revenge on the owners Mitch and Murray. He runs roughshod over Michael Schacherbauer’s Aaranow, who is told he’s an accessory before the fact just for listening to the scheme. Together, they bounce Mamet’s lines off each other in an effective exchange that reinforces the desperation of the previous scene with Levene and Williamson (Christian Thompson).
Christian Thompson masters the language well in this production, standing toe-to-toe with his elder characters who are dismissive of his role as an office manager and quick to denigrate him as a glorified office man who isn’t a “real man” like the sales guys. Thompson spent too much of the play side-on to the audience rather than cheating out and didn’t react to Daryl Thompson’s first speeches enough. Too many times Daryl Thompson was stopping an interruption that wasn’t happening.
Vitols had the challenging role of being the counterpart to all the other men on stage. Whereas they were brash and aggressive, he was wimpy and nervous. Rounding out the cast was Leo Poroshin as the police officer investigating the office break-in.
Glengarry Glen Ross is a dark play about the American workplace and the people who inhabit it. It’s harsh and unrelenting and Ixion captures all of the cynicism of Mamet.