✭✭✭✩✩

by David Mamet, directed by David Storch

Soulpepper Theatre Company, Young Centre, Toronto

April 7-May 9, 2009

If Glengarry Glen Ross serves up a volatile cocktail of greed and male competition, Soulpepper’s new production is more a Grasshopper than a dirty martini.  David Mamet’s 1983 masterpiece, best known perhaps in its 1992 film incarnation, is a scathing indictment of unfettered capitalism and the corruption to which it leads.  There could hardly be a more appropriate time than now to revive it.  Director David Storch has a top-notch cast to work with but plays up Mamet’s comedy of abuse and humiliation at the expense of the devastating tragedy that lies beneath it.

The play focusses on the cut-throat world of salesmen in Chicago trying to flog the worthless properties of the title to unsuspecting clients.  Mamet shows social Darwinism at work in the sales contests that the agency’s owners have set up.  The biggest seller wins a prize; the lowest loses his job.  Under this increased pressure older salesmen like George Aaronow (William Webster) and Shelly Levene (Eric Peterson) slip down in sales figures, prestige and perceived manhood against younger men in their prime like Richard Roma (Albert Schultz) and Dave Moss (Peter Donaldson).  The focus of their anger is John Williamson (Jordan Pettle), the office manager and youngest of all, against whom Moss hatches a plan of attack.  Shelly, the tragic centre of the piece, deceives himself that he can still “close” and will do anything to succeed, including playing both sides of the game with and against John. 

If Storch has perceived this structure, he certainly does nothing to make it clear.  Even the completely amoral Richard comes off as charming, not slimy.  Storch keeps the dialogue on the superficial level of foul-mouthed jokes without revealing the aggression or the ugly pleasure of toying with people that motivates it.  When Chicago’s famed Steppenwolf Theatre performed the play here in 2003, tension grew inexorably throughout the action as we realized the danger Shelly runs in trusting anyone in a world where ruthless self-interest is the guiding principle.  Storch’s production, in contrast, generates no tension at all.  With Steppenwolf, we realized with a gasp when Shelly makes his fatal error; with Soulpepper there’s nothing.  Undoubtedly, the Soulpepper cast, especially without the feeble Chicago accents, could generate the same intensity as Steppenwolf did.  What it needs is a director bold enough to frighten us with the play’s moral darkness.  

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2009-04-08.

Photo: Albert Schultz and Eric Peterson. ©Cylla von Tiedemann.