Imagine a real estate office in Chicago in the 1980s. A competition has been announced to spur on the salesmen. The winner gets a Cadillac. The losers get fired. Normally ultra-competitive, now it’s no holds barred for these unscrupulous characters.
“This play is hyper-toxic masculinity,” observed Director Brett Marston. “It's about men in a competitive, cutthroat business, but the draw of this play is how beautifully crafted it is from a writing perspective. He’s written it almost like a musical. It's got an incredibly rhythmic pace to it.”
They talk over one another. They cut each other off. They curse each other out. It’s a hostile workplace on steroids, and ‘roid rage abounds.
“Every character has a significant grievance about something that's going on in their workplace, whether it's they're not getting the [leads] that they want, whether it's the leadership that's dictating what they do,” Marston added. “There're grievances about the competition. Some of them think it's absolutely absurd. There's fear, there's threat, because two of them are gonna get fired.”
Offstage, Marston’s actors are genuinely nice guys. Marshalling the ruthlessness necessary for their parts really challenged their acting ability.
“They really opened themselves up to exploring that kind of masculine passion and rage and anger and the competitiveness,” said Marston.
Asked if audiences might find the conflict and language off-putting, Marston gives a shake of his head.
“If you want to see good theater, good acting, the content is very male, but I think that they can appreciate the story and the solid acting,” Marston said.
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David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama "Glengarry Glen Ross" is set in a cutthroat Chicago real estate office where four salespeople compete to sell mostly worthless properties to unwitting customers. Whoever sells the most wins a car; the two who sell the least are out of a job – a ruthless environment where each character will do anything to come out on top.
“I wasn't originally slotted to direct this show,” said Marston. “Scott Lilly was going to direct it, but then he was working on some other things and he approached me about directing it. I've never been a huge Mamet fan, and I've never been a huge fan of toxic masculinity. This play is hyper-toxic masculinity. It's about men in a competitive, cutthroat business.”
“Glengarry Glen Ross” is an ode to unregulated capitalism by one of Broadway's few true conservative playwrights. While many theaters and directors find the topic off-putting, Marston included, the play is produced often because it offers male stars wonderful parts full of stunning, serrated language.
Marston agrees.
“The draw of this play is how beautifully crafted it is from a writing perspective,” Marston observed. “It's almost like a musical. It's got an incredibly rhythmic pace to it, and if you can't find that rhythm, the piece isn’t going to work. We worked a lot during the rehearsal process on finding the rhythm of the piece, to convey what Mamet was trying to say.”
A large part of this rhythm comes from the syncopation of the characters talking over each other and cutting each other off. Each of the salesmen is narcissistic, self-absorbed and extremely opinionated. Often, they’re more interested in making a point than establishing a dialogue. They’re not terribly interested in listening to what their colleagues have to say.
That presents a challenge for the actors, who are trained to never jump a fellow actor’s lines.
“It's a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, and I can see why,” Marston said. “Again, not being a huge Mamet fan, I kind of entered this reluctantly, but the more I got into it, the more I worked with the actors, who are all incredibly talented, the more I have come to appreciate the show.”
The show, but not necessarily Mamet.
Prior to closing its recent revival on June 28, 2025, “Glengarry Glen Ross” was the only Broadway production by an explicitly pro-MAGA playwright. As the revival was heading into previews, Mamet published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, writing that Donald Trump is “returning the American government to decency, the rule of law and common sense.” In the op-ed, Mamet was critical of woke culture, identity politics and DEI and, not surprisingly, there are no female characters or people of color in the play.
But neither Marston nor Producing Artistic Director Scott Lilly mentioned the playwright’s politics. After all, it was written in 1982 and first performed in 1983, long before Donald Trump’s successful run for the White House in 2015.
However, it is really not necessary to draw a line from the play to the playwright’s political views. It’s not just that the play is about four unscrupulous real estate salesmen who fabricate and deceive in order to sell worthless lots to unsuspecting rubes. It’s the non-stop verbal aggression they display toward one another and the vulgar, misogynistic references they make with unsettling regularity. There are striking similarities to the tenor and content of Pete Hegseth’s September address to the nation’s generals.
“We've got strong capitalist views in the country right now, and we have other views that border on socialism,” Marston noted. “The show is truly a comment on capitalism, but it might be better to think of it as a period piece. It’s set in the '80s, perhaps when capitalism was more pronounced."
In Marston’s estimation, focusing on the play’s politics detracts from the quality of the acting.
“Scott Lilly cast this show beautifully,” said Marston. “Each role is beautifully shaped to the actor playing it.”
Each actor is truly superb.
Mitch Frank plays Shelley Levene, a down-on-his-luck salesman who was once at the top of his game. He hasn’t had a sale in a while and management has lost so much confidence in his ability to make and close sales that they refuse to give him quality leads, much to Shelley’s dismay and chagrin. His opening scene opposite of Keith Gahagan, who plays the general manager, John Williamson, is a master class in desperation. He’s on the fast track to being fired. And after a career as “Levene the Machine,” he seethes at the notion that some GM who’s never sold anything in his life controls the leads he gets and, thereby, his fate.
Keith Gahagan is that GM. Think Trump and Zelensky in the Oval Office. Shelley doesn’t have the cards. John Williamson does, and he’s totally comfortable exercising the seemingly unfettered power he holds over Shelley and his co-workers. But what’s impressive in the characterization and the acting is the restraint Williamson displays in the exercise of that power. He keeps his cards close to the chest, but when it’s time for him to trump his minion, does he ever.
T.J. Albertson is Richard Roma, the alpha predator in this Chicago real estate office. Roma knows his place, or rather, that he’s irreplaceable, so his interactions with Williamson and the other salesmen take on a much different timber. He’s a man on a mission – making and closing the next sale. Because of that orientation, he has little time or patience for the silly sales incentive the GM has announced. The Cadillac is his, with or without the necessity of a competition.
Allan Reeves plays Dave Moss, a salesman who’s come up with his own way of besting Williamson. He’s hellbent on stealing the leads and selling them for a lucrative payoff to a rival broker. But he’s not about to do the dirty work himself. He’s all about threatening one of the office’s bottom feeders to do the deed.
Moss’ target is George Aaronow, played to perfection by Jim Corsica. As the oldest salesman in the office, he’s the most expendable. But unlike his fellow salesmen, Aaronow has a moral compass, so Moss’ threats create a moral dilemma that Corsica deftly portrays.
Jack Weld plays James Lingk, whose wife insists he rescind the purchase of a lot that Richard Roma sold to him. Lingk is cowed, not only by his wife, but by Richard Roma. Anyone who has ever been talked into buying something by a slick sales representative and has thereafter experienced buyer’s remorse will identify with James Lingk thanks in large measure to the sensibility, body language and demeanor that Weld brings to the role.
Gregg Birr has a more limited role as the police investigator who is brought in to determine who’s stolen the missing leads … and the office phones … in the ransacked real estate office we see in act two of the play. He does a good job portraying the no-nonsense investigator, Baylon.
“So, I've had the joy of working with several of them on other occasions and know their acting styles and know their acting capabilities,” said Marston. “Each of them really worked hard on being and reacting to the aggression we see in this play. They're all very nice guys. They're all arts people, not really used to this or accustomed to this kind of world. But they really opened themselves up to exploring that kind of masculine passion and the rage, anger and the competitiveness on display in this show.”
Marston was on guard to make sure that the onstage aggression the characters evince did not carry over to his cast’s offstage interactions. He was heartened to find that to the contrary, they bonded in a way Marston has seldom seen in other productions.
“I don't know if it's a male thing or just the work that we did, but I did find it interesting. There was a total male bonding in it,” Marston noted. “That's interesting because they had to basically step out of their own personalities in order to channel the aggression that you really see built into this play.”
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
