Glengarry Glen Ross | Theatre: A Mamet Play, Glengarry Glen Ross
In the following review, which originally appeared in the New York Times on March 26, 1984, Rich offers praise for Glengarry Glen Ross, applauding Mamet's ability to make "all-American music—hot jazz and wounding blues—out of his salesmen's scatological native lingo," and asserting that Glengarry Glen Ross ''may well be the most accomplished play its author has yet given us."
The only mellifluous words in David Mamet's new play are those of its title—Glengarry Glen Ross. In this scalding comedy about small-time, cutthroat real-estate salesmen, most of the language is abrasive—even by the standards of the author's American Buffalo. If the characters aren't barking out the harshest four-letter expletives, then they're speaking in the clammy jargon of a trade in which "leads," "closings" and "the board" (a sales chart) are the holiest of imperatives. There's only one speech in which we hear about such intimacies as sex and loneliness—and that...
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