At the climax of David Mamet’s masterpiece “Glengarry Glen Ross”—now astatine the Palace, successful its 4th Broadway accumulation since 1984—a motormouthed salesman successful a shady real-estate bureau successful Chicago lambastes his bureau manager for fouling a deal. As a gullible purchaser starts to get nervous, the manager accidentally reveals that the salesman has been lying, torpedoing thousands of dollars successful commission. “You anserine fucking cunt,” the salesman snarls astatine him. “Whoever told you you could enactment with men?”
A man’s work—in the swift, grim, aurally intoxicating “Glengarry”—is ne'er done. First, there’s the machine-gun patter required to merchantability adjacent an acre of what we stitchery is utterly worthless land. Then, there’s the information that each slimeball successful the bureau fancies himself a tiger, and immoderate speech tin go a tar pit. The apical operator, Ricky Roma (played present by Kieran Culkin), remains friends with his fading mentor, Shelley Levene (Bob Odenkirk), though he’s ever looking for a mode to siphon concern distant from the older man. And a elemental chat astatine a Chinese restaurant, similar the 1 betwixt the dyspeptic Dave Moss (Bill Burr) and the weary George Aaronow (Michael McKean), mightiness crook retired to person been transgression entrapment. The infinitesimal you listen, you’re sunk. “We’re conscionable talking,” Moss says, the play’s codification for “You’re cooked.”
Life operates similar the leaderboard successful the bureau income competition—everyone tin ever spot who’s ahead. Of course, that Darwinian kill-or-be-killed ethic works for “Glengarry” revivals, too, particularly erstwhile they’re held up against the movie, which was released successful 1992: if you play Roma, you’re going mano a mano with Al Pacino astatine his reptilian peak; if you’re Levene, you’re battling memories of Jack Lemmon and Pacino, who played Levene connected Broadway successful 2012. I don’t personally deliberation that theatre should beryllium a competition, but these are the rules of the Mametian game. The “Glengarry” publication is arsenic dynamically notated arsenic a philharmonic score, and it offers small country for interpretation; an histrion has to drill heavy to marque an impression.
In this handsome production—directed by Patrick Marber arsenic an entertaining showcase alternatively than arsenic a backhanded tragedy—McKean manages to sidle up to the portion of Aaronow, infusing him with a lovely, understated aerial of collapse. The erstwhile standup comedian Burr, arsenic Moss, takes a thrillingly berserk attack to Mamet’s syncopated cadences; his high, aggravated dependable carries astonishing momentum, and it hits similar a solid successful a barroom fight. But the dynamic betwixt the rising Ricky and the falling Shelley sits astatine the bosom of the drama, and though Culkin and Odenkirk are strong, they’re ne'er astonishing. Odenkirk’s representation of nonaccomplishment is bittersweet but not, arsenic it needs to be, pathetic, and Culkin’s shifty insouciance couldn’t instrumentality a babe retired of a lollipop, fto unsocial merchantability his character’s grandiloquent flights of quasi philosophy.
Why truthful galore revivals of “Glengarry”? The reply usually seems obvious: it offers antheral stars fantastic parts afloat of stunning, serrated language. But I couldn’t assistance noticing, successful the thickening aerial of 2025, that it’s the lone portion connected Broadway by an explicitly pro-MAGA playwright. As this “Glengarry” was heading into previews, Mamet, successful an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, wrote that Donald Trump is “returning the American authorities to decency, the regularisation of instrumentality and communal sense.” I don’t get the feeling that the producers would similar america to deliberation astir their writer’s authorities excessively much, and it whitethorn beryllium a mug’s crippled to gully a nonstop enactment from his imaginative enactment of forty years agone to his beliefs today. But, portion watching the show, I did wonderment what the young men sitting astir maine were absorbing from the play’s non-stop verbal aggression, which I’ve ever believed was a razor-edged critique of blustery American masculinity. Could each this jocular, misogynistic vulgarity influence anybody? Surely not. All these guys onstage—they’re conscionable talking.
Meanwhile, up astatine the Winter Garden, George Clooney is really hoping that a antheral relation exemplary tin marque a lasting content connected his public. The Broadway adaptation of his superb 2005 film, “Good Night, and Good Luck,” stakes the superstar’s estimation connected his quality to transportation his silver-screen magnetism to unrecorded theatre, and from there, I think, to real-world efficacy. “Good Night,” adapted by Clooney and Grant Heslov from their ain screenplay and directed for the signifier by David Cromer, takes spot backmost erstwhile men were men, cigaret fume made ’em each squint similar cowboys, and the small ladies (mostly) didn’t travel to the office. More important, it takes spot successful and astir 1954, erstwhile Edward R. Murrow (Clooney), connected his CBS quality program, “See It Now,” took a basal against Senator Joe McCarthy, the Red Scare demagogue who utilized accusations of Communist subversion arsenic a bullwhip against his enemies.
In the movie, which Clooney directed, the histrion played the “See It Now” co-creator Fred Friendly, and David Strathairn gave an bonzer (and Oscar-nominated) show arsenic Murrow. As Friendly, Clooney was charmingly diffident, throwing his lines away; arsenic a director, helium combined beautifully composed black-and-white glamour with an insistently voyeuristic camera, which peered done windows to observe characters successful unguarded moments. Archival footage of the existent McCarthy—sweaty and shouting connected a subcommittee dais, say—gave the full happening the consciousness of a documentary, arsenic if it were an artifact from Hollywood’s aureate age.
Stepping into Murrow’s shoes connected Broadway, Clooney is surely graceful. He looks conscionable close successful the elegant plaything of nineteen-fifties trousers—Brenda Abbandandolo designed the costumes—and helium excels, arsenic helium has for much than 30 years, astatine communicating a winning benignant of weary resolve. But theatrical acoustics tin beryllium unforgiving, particularly with an histrion who tends to swallow his lines, nevertheless slyly. Accordingly, to seizure Clooney’s charisma, the accumulation relies connected closeups, changeable unrecorded onstage by a bulky CBS camera and projected onto a ample surface adjacent the audience. It’s a strategy with diminishing returns, though it does let america to spot the strain successful Clooney’s eyes erstwhile Murrow feels the pressure.
Clooney and Heslov, movie creatures successful their bones, are excessively accustomed to telling fractional their communicative done visuals, and immoderate scenes needed much of an overhaul for specified a antithetic melodramatic form. One full communicative line, a concealed matrimony betwixt 2 CBS employees, played by Ilana Glazer and Carter Hudson, comes disconnected arsenic downright foolish erstwhile we spot the mates awkwardly snuggled up against the proscenium, and, contempt galore cross-stage entrances, Cromer fails to bring the film’s consciousness of bustling question to the stage.
And truthful a finely made leaf has go a blunter object. But we are successful a clip erstwhile a hammer whitethorn beryllium much utile than a knife. Clooney and Heslov person chosen to alteration precise small of their twenty-year-old script, which sounds arsenic though it’s a deliberate allegory for everything that is happening now. When Murrow inveighs against convictions utilizing sealed evidence, we deliberation of immigrants being deported to El Salvador without owed process. When employees see signing a “loyalty oath,” we deliberation of the government’s existent screening of national workers.
It’s been a play erstwhile the comparative inaccessibility of tickets has been precise overmuch connected my mind. The outgo of a brace to “Good Night, and Good Luck” astir apt means that the bulk of folks watching it are executives, media types, oregon well-heeled concern owners, immoderate of whom mightiness beryllium reasoning astir if and erstwhile courageousness volition beryllium required. These, probably, are the precise folks Clooney is trying to reach.
Near the extremity of the play, we spot the celebrated footage of the lawyer Joseph Welch asking McCarthy, successful 1954, “Have you nary consciousness of decency, sir, astatine agelong last?”—the inflection constituent for a state increasing bushed of McCarthy’s unsmooth disregard for the Constitution. (I’m definite it’s a coincidence that Welch worked astatine Hale & Dorr, a steadfast present known arsenic WilmerHale. Last month, WilmerHale sued the Trump Administration for its “plainly unlawful onslaught connected the bedrock principles of our nation’s ineligible system.”) Look, Clooney seems to beryllium saying. We did this before. We tin bash it again. ♦
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