Phillyist Reviews... Glengarry Glen Ross

I actually like David Mamet. Sexual Perversity in Chicago is one of my favorite one-act plays. I've used Oleanna for acting workshops and auditions more times than I can count. I own a poster from the film State and Main. But I think that Glengarry Glen Ross, possibly Mamet's best-known and most-performed play, is grossly overrated. Always have, and probably always will.

Which is a shame, really, because Theatre Exile really did put up a good production of Glengarry. Unfortunately, I think that, for me at least, it still wasn't enough to make me like the play. And then, add to my fundamental dislike for the script my difficulty in watching the entire first act of the show (the stage is WAY too close to the audience, which is on risers, and I somehow managed to sit behind a column of tall people; fortunately, the seats on either side of me seemed to be the only empty ones in the house, so I had full leaning capabilities), and take a guess at the overall nature of this review.

Sure, I can say that the cast (Harry Philibosian, Dan Hodge, H. Michael Walls, Joe Canuso, William Zielinsky, Brian McCann, and Bill Rahill) performed excellently, that Matt Pfeiffer did as good a job as he could in keeping the increasingly-dated material fresh, that I really loved what set designer Matt Saunders did with the Christ Church space (again, I would have loved it more if he could have moved the first act's set back about five feet), that I was impressed by light designer James Leitner's ability to keep the large venue from feeling too vast. I can even tell you that, if you're a fan of the show, you'll probably really enjoy Theatre Exile's staging of it. But I can't personally tell you that I liked the show. Because I didn't. And it's all David Mamet's fault.

Photo by Cory Frisco, via Theatre Exile.