Glengarry Glen Ross (Criticism)

Criticism

Terry Browne

Browne is an instructor at the State University of New York who specializes in drama. In this essay he discusses morality and characterization in Mamet’s play.

There is no doubt that David Mamet is a major writer and perhaps the preeminent American playwright of his generation. As Dennis Carroll pointed out in David Mamet, Mamet is the only American playwright to emerge from the 1970s who has managed to establish a significant international reputation. His plays have appealed to a large and wide range of audience.

Glengarry Glen Ross met with success not only in London and New York, but had a long United States national tour and quickly received major productions in Tel Aviv, Israel; Johannesburg, South Africa; Dublin, Ireland; Marseilles, France; Genoa, Italy; Sydney, Australia; Helsinki, Finland; and Tokyo, Japan. Moreover, Mamet had had major successes before Glengarry Glen Ross and has continued to write excitingly and successfully for the theatre in addition to his steady output of scripts for movies and his career as a film director. Furthermore, as Carroll pointed out, Mamet has created a body of work rich in complex variations on his themes rather than merely repeating himself obsessively.

He has written plays focusing on relationships between men and women, parents and children, sexual politics, communion, redemption, the power of language and the debasement of language, the passing on of knowledge and tradition, to mention only some major themes. He has also written books of essays, childrens’ plays, radio plays, and television scripts. While Glengarry Glen Ross contains many layers of thematic concern, it is usually grouped with American Buffalo and Speed-the-Plow as major plays that focus primarily on business and capitalism. In American Buffalo the characters are small-time thieves who consider themselves to be businessmen. Speed-the-Plow focuses on Hollywood, where the product is films and the focus is on raw power and making money.

There is no doubt that Mamet is a moral writer who seeks to make the audience aware of what he sees as the spiritual vacuum in present-day America (and, judging from the broad range of productions, in other countries as well). We are pressured to succeed, to make more money, to buy more things that we don’t need. We don’t take the time to regenerate our spirit. We do not accept responsibility for what happens to ourselves but rather operate on received values without questioning whether they are good or even aimed at making us happy. People full of energy and talent spend themselves seeking empty rewards. Mamet says in his book of essays Writing in Restaurants, “Our civilization is convulsed and dying, and it has not yet gotten the message. It is sinking, but it has not sunk into complete barbarity, and I often think that nuclear war exists for no other reason than to spare us that indignity.”

In another essay, Mamet says that “the essential task of the drama (as of the fairy tale) is to offer a solution to a problem which in nonsusceptible to reason. To be effective, the drama must induce us to suspend our rational judgment, and to follow the internal logic of the piece so that our pleasure (our “cure”) is the release at the end of the story.” We suspend reason in order to gain deep insights. The purpose of theatre is not to teach a lesson or to provide a neat “moral;” the purpose of theatre is to provide us with a communal experience which we then ponder, as we do all forceful experiences in our lives. Mamet does not preach his themes at us; his themes are played out. He does not describe his characters; he puts them into action. Mamet has said that the job of the dramatist is to translate the imperfectly formed desire of the characters into clear action that is capable of communicating itself to the audience.

In drama, just as in life, we judge people by what they do, by their actions. Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, rightly said that character is just habitual action. The dramatist must show us what the character does rather than have him described by either himself or others. In his studies of the Stanislavksy system of acting with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre, Mamet came to appreciate that the actor is always pursuing the character’s objectives, trying at each moment to achieve what the character wants. This action, which is always present in well written dialogue, is known as the “subtext.” It is by discovering the character’s objectives and how the character would go about trying to win those objectives, and then doing those things — the actions — that the actor and the character become one and the same. It is not a psychotic experience for the actor; it is mental focus. Moreover, by focusing on winning those objectives the actor is freed from extraneous considerations. The actor performs the actions, and the “meaning” of the play is in those actions. It is precisely his mastery and economy of action in dialogue which impresses audiences and makes plays by Mamet challenging and exciting for actors.

Joe Mantegna, who has acted in several Mamet plays and films and played Roma in the first U.S. production of Glengarry Glen Ross, said in an interview with Leslie Kane in her David Mamet: A Casebook, “The great thing about David is the way he can say so much with so little. . . everything else seems so over-written. There are certainly other writers who have that capability, such as Shakespeare and Pinter. As much is said between the lines as with the lines.” He also pointed out that because the writing is so concise and full of meaning, the actor must be precise in his choice of how each line is delivered. Mamet says that the actor does not need to characterize, he simply needs to find the correct action and then do it. From seeing those actions, the audience will draw its own conclusions about the character. Mantegna says, “You don’t have to worry about dropping little clues or hints that will help the audience figure this out later. No, you just play the moment as real as you can.”

Mamet has long been fascinated with language. His father would often stop conversation at the dinner table until David or his sister Lyn could find the exact word to express their meaning. In Writing in Restaurants he remembers that “our schoolyard code of honor recognized words as magical and powerful unto themselves,” and that “The Schoolboy Universe was not corrupted by the written word, and was ruled by the power of sounds.” It is that “power of sounds” which the characters in Glengarry Glen Ross use to achieve their objectives. As Jack Shepard, the Roma in the original London production, described it to Anne Deane in David Mamet: Language as Dramatic Action, ‘ “The rhythms are slick, fast, syncopated like a drum solo.” Frank Rich, the critic for the New York Times, talked of the dialogue in musical terms: “In the jagged riffs of coarse, monosyllabic words, we hear and feel both the exhilaration and sweaty desperation of the huckster’s calling.” In the interview with Dean, Shepard recalled the great tension of the rehearsal period: “There is just so much to remember at any one time in Mamet’s works . . . Mamet knows exactly what he wants . . . he is very fast, very dynamic.” The language has the feeling of improvisation with speeches overlapping, people interrupting each other, thoughts unfinished. It sounds like ordinary street talk or natural speech, but it has been painstakingly and specifically created to have an impact. It is crafted for the actor to use as action. This fact is especially important for the actors in Glengarry Glen Ross because the characters use language and storytelling to survive and to celebrate survival. The characters themselves are actors. This is most obvious during the improvised performance with which Roma and Levene attempt to steer Lingk away from his intention to cancel his contract, with Levene playing the vice president of American Express who is a major client and friend of Roma. Roma gives Levene only a few cues on how to proceed, and Levene enters the role. Another obvious instance occurs when Williamson tells Roma that Murray, one of die partners in the firm, will take care of re-closing Roma’s sales himself: “he’ll be the president, just come in from out of town.” Playing roles is natural for these people, and they change roles to suit their purposes in any given circumstances.

Levene is a master at this. In Act I he pleads with Williamson in an attempt to get good leads. He is submissive, repeats Williamson’s name, John, is careful not be critical of him, strives to appear confident, uses delaying tactics to prevent Williamson from turning him down. At the same time, Mamet has incorporated the rhythms of desperation into Levene’s speech. In Act II, when Levene tells the story of his sale, his enthusiasm and pride are unbounded and infectious. He carefully draws the scene, gives us enough detail without getting tedious, uses fluid phrasing to pull us along, and holds us in suspense as he recalls sitting silently at the kitchen table with me old couple for “twenty-two minutes by the kitchen clock” until “they wilted all at once. No gesture . . . nothing. Like together. They, I swear to God, they both kind of imperceptibly slumped.” After this climax to the story, Levene provides a denouement as he quietly recalls having a small drink to solemnize the occasion:“Little shot glasses. A pattern in ‘em. And we toast. In silence. (Pause.)” The story winds down gently and all are quiet in appreciation. The viewer may find reprehensible the fact that Levene has sold worthless land to old people who cannot afford it, but his story pulls us in and and we admire his performance nevertheless. The audience sees Levene the actor as masterful storyteller, and they also “see” Levene in a scene which he writes and in which he is the star actor. The viewer sees Levene selling himself.

Mamet based the characters in Glengarry Glen Ross to some extent on the men with whom he had worked for a year in a dubious real estate office in Chicago. He admired dieir ability to live by their wits and their dynamic addiction to what they did. He found them amazing. That does not mean that he approves of what they do. As he points out in Writing in Restaurants, “The desire to manipulate, to treat one’s colleagues as servants, reveals a deep sense of personal worthlessness: as if one’s personal thoughts, choices, and insights could not bear reflection, let alone a reasoned mutual examination.” Behind all the foul-moudied manipulation and boasting are people who are empty or nearly empty of humane values. They victimize others, but they are victims themselves of a system which offers no rewards but money and punishes failure by taking away the means of earning a living.

The mass media has created an audience who expect everything to be neatly summed up and easily spelled out for them, including laugh-tracks to tell mem when to laugh and somber music to tell them when to be sad. They want simple answers, lessons. Then mey will know what to say about die play, if they feel the need to say anything at all, and can go on the next diversion. But mat is not me job of theatre and David Mamet does not do that for us. Glengarry Glen Ross is character-centered and the characters are expressed through fast-paced action. The audience is given an exceptional and disturbing experience. Later, when we think about that experience, there are plenty of clues to the deeper meanings in the play for those who are attuned. The experience becomes our experience to ponder.

Source: Terry Browne, in an essay for Drama for Students, Gale, 1997.

What Do I Read Next?

• American Buffalo, Mamet’s 1975 play about three low-life men plotting to steal a rare coin, gives another slant on Mamet’s view of American business.
• Speed-the-Plow is Mamet’s 1987 “Hollywood play” produced in New York with Joe Mantegna, Ron Silver, and Madonna.
• Oleanna, Mamet’s 1992 play, deals with teaching and the power of “political correctness” to utterly destroy a college professor.
• The Death of a Salesman is Arthur Miller’s 1947 classic play about a salesman and distorted values in America.
• Writing in Restaurants, a book of essays by Mamet, gives a good look at his philosophy of writing and his view of contemporary America.
• A Whore’s Profession, 1996, is Mamet’s most recent book of essays about working as a writer.
• The entry on David Mamet by Patricia Lewis and Terry Browne in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 7: Twentieth-Century American Dramatists, published in 1981 by Gale, gives a good overview of Mamet’s early works.