Glengarry Glen Ross (1984), a play by David Mamet. [Golden Theatre, 378 perf.; Pulitzer Prize.] In three separate scenes at a Chinese restaurant Shelly Levene (Robert Prosky), a failing real estate salesman, pleads with his boss, John Williamson (J. T. Walsh), for a better list of prospects; Dave Moss (James Tolkan) tries to inveigle George Aaronow (Mike Nussbaum) into robbing the real estate office to obtain the same lists; and the high‐flying Richard Roma (Joe Mantegna) hustles James Lingk (Lane Smith), an unsuspecting prospect. However, when the real estate office is burglarized it turns out that Levene, not Aaronow, is the culprit. Moss quits, Aaronow reluctantly continues in a job he hates, and the foul‐mouthed Roma continues to bull his way from sale to sale. This “drama‐cum‐comedy,” as Bernard Weiner of the San Francisco Chronicle branded it, was an unflinching, powerful play doing for the cynical, hard‐nosed real estate world of the 1980s what The Front Page did for the newspaper world of the 1920s.

The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. Copyright © 2004 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved.