faustus | Glengarry Glen Ross (Reply)

We'd watched Glengarry Glen Ross a few weeks back - well, August, and a rewatch on my part. It's got a cast to die for: Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey, plus Alec Baldwin in a cameo and, hey, Jonathan Pryce plays a role where he hardly gets to say a word. It's Death of a Salesman eighties styley - a group of salesmen trying to convert tired leads into confirmed sales, and only the successful can be given the decent leads. Lemmon's on a losing streak, hasn't closed for weeks, is desperate. Harris is fed up with all this bullshit - reckons someone should steal those leads, take them elsewhere, sell them. Especially after Baldwin gives them the motivational speech.

Let me have your attention for a moment. Put that coffee down. Coffee's for closers only. You think I'm fucking with you? I am not fucking with you. I'm here from downtown. I'm here from Mitch and Murray. And I'm here on a mission of mercy.
The good news is you're fired. The bad news is: you've got... all you've got, just one week to regain your jobs starting tonight. Starting with tonight's sit. Oh, have I got your attention now? Good. 'Cause were adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.
Do you get the picture? You laughing now? You've got leads. Mitch and Murray paid good money. Get their names to sell them. You can't close the leads you're given, you can't close shit; you are shit. Hit the bricks pal and beat it cause you are going out! If you can't play in the man's game, you can't close them. You go home and tell your wife your troubles. Because only one thing counts in this life: get them to sign on the line which is dotted.
'A,' 'B,' 'C.' 'A,' always, 'B,' be, 'C,' closing Always be closing. Always be closing. Get out there. You got the prospects coming in. You think they came in to get out of the rain? A guy don't walk on the lot lest he wants to buy. They're sitting out there waiting to give you their money.
You see this watch? You see this watch? That watch cost more than your car. I made $970,000 last year, how much you make? You see pal, that's who I am and you're nothing. Nice guy; I don't give a shit. Good father; fuck you, go home and play with your kids. You want to work here, close!
You think this is abuse? You think this is abuse, you cocksucker? You can't take this, how can you take the abuse you get on a sit? You don't like it? Leave.
I can go out there tonight, the materials you got, make myself $15,000. Tonight! In two hours! Can you? Can you? Go and do likewise. Get mad you son of a bitches, get mad!
You know what it takes to sell real estate? It takes brass balls to sell real estate. Go and do likewise gents. The money's out there, you pick it up it's yours; you don't, I got no sympathy for you. You want to go out on those sits tonight and close, close it's yours. If not you're going to be shinin' my shoes. And you know what you'll be saying, a bunch of losers sittin' around in a bar, "Oh yeah I used to be a salesman, it's a tough racket."
These are the new leads. These are the Glengarry leads. And to you they're gold, and you don't get them. Why? Because to give them to you is just throwing them away. They're for closers.
I'd wish you good luck but you wouldn't know what to do with it if you got it.

After a certain amount of toing and froing (we'd seen it recently, plus I fancied Christian Slater in Swimming with Sharks or Mark Thomas on the last night of his stand up) I got tickets for this, and tried to pick them up the day before - apparently you have to queue on the night. This wasn't a problem - we wandered through Shaftesbury Avenue, and failed to find that pizza restaurant in Piccadilly, indeed actually found few restaurants (the only food-free block in the West End, as if it were owned by ex-Quakers who had turned to drink but frowned on eating), popped into a Soho bookshop to look at the remainders and got to the theatre to find we had been upgraded from balcony to rear dress circle. We'd been bumped.

The play is less frantic than the film - whereas there's a whole lot of the salesmen intercut on the screen, the first half here is a series of dialogues between paired characters, such that you wonder if, say, Jonathan Pryce is just in the one scene. There are long pauses as the set changes - a slightly different diner. I think I'd stage it a bit less we're-in-a-different-place, or at least tie it up with music. (I remember the scene changes in Sexual Perversity in Chicago when I ASMed it - and I remember being caught on stage when the sound man triggered the lights.)

But it's a masterpiece of dialogue - not quite ever overlapping but as tight as can be short of that. There's no space for blowing a line, or stumbling. It must take forever to learn it. I don't think Pryce was quite as strong as Lemmon, but he does do the saggy, tired, burnt-out case very well. Aiden Gillen managed to perform without too much of the ghost of Al Pacino behind him - and since he is a graduate of Queer as Folk, there was a frisson of amusement with his use of the word "queer".

In the second half we get to the office of the salesmen, after a break-in in which the good leads have been stolen. Everyone is under suspicion, and Pryce is ecstatic because he has made a sale. It shifts from dialogues to ensemble and back again, as Mamet seems more comfortable with the head to head. As in the film, there's a sense of hopelessness to it all, as nbo one can come out of it very well. And then there's the shiver running through the audience as characters light up cigarettes.

There is, alas, no motivational speech - that was one of the ways that the play was opened out - and in fact the whole thing is not much more than a hour in length. Of course, if this were Pinter, it would be two hours, and perhaps the amount of dialogue means that you wouldn't want much more.

I fell out of love with theatre some years ago, but this was a very enjoyable experience. Maybe I should try and see more of it.