UK Theatre Network

They say you should write what you know.  When David Mamet had a holiday job in a sales office pitching valueless real estate to credulous punters he stored up this first-hand experience to create his iconic 1980s stage play Glengarry Glen Ross.

The salesmen of this particular firm are, like all sales reps, psychotic, paranoid, blame-shifting, duplicitous egomaniacs, constantly harking back to some golden age when commissions fell like pennies from heaven, and each convinced that the manager is passing them poor leads and no-hope clients.  Bad enough when you’re trying to earn an honest buck on a day-to-day basis - but when this month’s sales figures will either win you a Cadillac or your cards, unconventional and desperate tactics are required.

Anyone expecting fireworks and melodrama will be surprised by director Chris Honer’s subtle and refined reading.  He gives us a humane Tolstoy-like perspective on the characters, reflecting their internal view of themselves rather than crudely externalising their flaws and failings.

It is perhaps unusual, but you can get away with this kind of understatement in the intimate confines of the Library Theatre (a proximity emphasised by Judith Croft’s design which puts the Act 1 set right at the front of the stage).  And pitch perfect casting means you recognise the characters before they even open their mouths.  Leigh Symonds’ apologetic Lingk is a professional victim; James Quinn’s sweaty Aaronow is a little guy in a big guy’s body; Paul Barnhill’s nerdish Williamson has been promoted above his abilities but is too dumb to realise it; and John McAndrew’s baby-faced Moss is brazen in his treachery.  All these qualities can be seen at a glance, so there’s never any need for the actors to overstate characteristics which they already embody.  

That incredibly powerful actor David Fleeshman, here as the delusional has-been Shelly Levene, plays against his own inherent physicality and gives us a detailed, almost finickerty interpretation of the role that rationalises all the conflicts and contradictions in the man.

Finally Richard Dormer is mesmerising as smiling wolf Richard Roma, the company’s ruthless über-salesman.  Dangerous, charming and charged like an electric wire, he’s an alpha-male in a testosterone-fuelled world yet almost girlish in the way he dances and flirts to achieve his own ends.   

Judith Croft’s set is superbly realised, from the Chinese restaurant’s plush velvet booths to the faithful recreation of a shabby 1980s office where even the cheap plywood desks appear to be authentic period pieces.

Those who are familiar with the film should be warned that the dramatis personae of the stage version are slightly different.  Ironically Chris Honer’s production is more forensic and close-up than any film would dare to be with a Mamet script, while high production values and a first-rate cast make this one not to miss.

Glengarry Glen Ross is on until Saturday 3 April 2010

Prices: £8.00-£18.00 (concessions available)

Eves: Mon-Thurs @ 7.30pm; Fri & Sat @ 8pm

Matinees: Thurs & Sat @ 3pm

Box Office: 0161 236 7110

www.librarytheatre.com