Richmond Theatre – until 20 April 2019
Reviewed by Prachya van de Gevel
4****
Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet , tells of a group of Salesmen all vying to make the leader board and their cunning, stories, and bragging rights, as they delve into the cut throat world of sales. Being in sales myself I found hilarity in many of the depictions of the central characters.
Scott Williamson played by Scott Sparrow, was well played he had a real wormy character about him, I wouldn’t trust him handling my accounts, he is the one that distributes the sales leads to the Salesmen: Roma, (Nigel Harman), Dave Moss (Denis Conway), George Aaranow (Will Johnson) and Shelley (Mark Benton). With the cast rounded out by the characters of Baylen ( Zephryn Taitte) and James Lingk (James Staddon).
I think all the roles were very well played, and really captured the spirit of the boastfulness and the roller coaster of emotions that comes with being in a high pressured environment. Tempers are regular flared and , when you’re up you’re up and when you on a bad streak the emotional toll that hits can be hard. All these emotions and feelings were very well acted out.
There was just 2 sets and both highly detailed, I think the only reason there is a break is to prepare for the set change because it is quite extensive, but for the first half you don’t need too much as there is nothing to interact with and in some ways it could have been a bit more basic to not distract from the main character monologues.
My only critical point in the acting was a few dodgy accents, wasn’t sure if this was a New York or Chicago, but either way I think it would have been fine with a British accent.
The idea of relying on your past figures and record in sales is a point that always comes up in real life, and this was very well portrayed in all their interactions you can tell easily who is selling themselves which I found very amusing, I think you don’t realise just how cut throat the business is until the very end of the play, but I will not spoil the ending.
You need to pay close attention as its so subtle yet so clever. I don’t think this will appeal to all audiences, as their is fairly static scenes, and this is mostly based on the verbal emotions and acting by the key players. What I will say is that if you work in a high pressured sales environment I think you would easily recognise the characters from your office in this cut throat business, every man for themselves!