Glengarry Glen Ross

Press, 9 February 1989, Page 7

Glengarry Glen Ross

Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet. Directed by Elric Hooper for the Court Theatre. At the Court Two from Tuesday, February 7. Running time: 8.15 p.m. to 10.10 p.m. Reviewed by John Farnsworth. There is no doubt about it, the Court has got off to a crackling start to the year. It has in its favour a scintillating script, taut direction and a clutch of committed performances dominated by one outstanding role. Without question, there are times when this production puts the live into live theatre.

Written in 1983 and having won praise on both sides of the Atlantic, the play has already taken too long to reach Christchurch. Like much of Mamet’s highly regarded work, it is uncompromisingly direct, but with an uncanny ear for speech rhythms and urban dialects. In this, case it is the Chicago accent. An idiom the cast handles tolerably enough. The play is an attack on the American Dream, set in the modem mid-city jungle in the salesman-eat-salesman world of real estate. Four salesmen in a very average office struggle to sell dubious mid-western dreams on the promise of a threadbare commission and a bonus, or the sack, which faces two of the four in the next few days. In a scramble to stay afloat each turns his formidable persuasive skills on his partners or his boss, employing bribes, browbeating, bluster and straightforward theft to extort an advantage from the misery of their circumstances. If the action is finally too closely plotted, the script is still finely tuned and filled with rich characterisations. Rightly, that is hpw it is played.

Elric Hooper’s direction is deceptively naturalistic, unembellished but orchestrating minimal movement and acutely timed pacing to exploit the tensions in the scripting. This is one of his most successful and rewarding productions in a long time. He is aided by some good performances, although at present there is plenty of room for improvement, especially in some sluggish episodes in the first half. Still, Kevin Smith, coming across like a double-crossing George Michael look alike, develops an enticing interchange with Geoffrey Dolan as his thick-witted counterpart. Richard Harvest makes a depressingly recognisable psychological wreck, while Paul Barrett, somewhat uneasily, spends most of the evening glowering silently. Bill Le Marquand’s elder salesman, however, appears out-of-focus and uneasy at the moment. Dominating all these characterisations is K. C. Kelly’s rivetting performance as the ace salesman. It is one of the most charged and certainly the most astonishingly aggressive performances I can recall on a Court stage. From his cynically lusty live-for-today philosophy to his ruthless entrapment of Richard Harvest’s helpless client coupled with his displays of rage and admiration for various office figures, this was a memorable performance of magnitude and sinuous vitality. If the production presently has rough edges, they derive from the considerable demands of a tight script. But it has a directness and a tension which, particularly in the second. half, more than compensates. As a way to shake off the New Year doldrums, this play comes highly recommended. .