Review: “Glengarry Glen Ross” with Kieran Culkin, Bob Odenkirk and Bill Burr

Take care of Richard Roma. The top man in the bottom feeder of a scammer Chicago real estate agency, he has the appearance of hypnotism and the eye-opening spill. Identifying your vulnerability with forensic accuracy, he tells them with a blunt needle. (“Do you think you're weird?” he asks one mark. “I'm going to tell you something: we're all odd.”) If that's what you need, he's a brother who thinks big on your behalf, and sees that only risk can provide beyond your sad safety habits.

There is no real reward. The lot he sells in Florida is slowly called by the Slidic called Glengarry Highlands and Glenroth Farm, but it's not worth it.

Back in the office, he is the Alpha among the losers. On the recent revenue leaderboard, he is dominated by the $100,000 mark that wins Cadillac in the agency sales contest. (Two low earners are fired.) His colleagues are simply an additional mark for being covered in bamboo. They have a scheme. He has juice.

It's no wonder he's still there. Forty-one years after he first hit Broadway, David Mamet's “Glengarry Glen Ross,” an unregulated ID of social disability capitalism, one of the play's biggest characters. He makes Willie Roman look like a softie. This salesman will never die.

Or I thought so. But something turned over during the strange, limp revival at Palace Theatre on Monday. Leading a sales team featuring Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr and Michael McKean, as played by Kieran Culkin, Roma is no longer the master of all other neurotic disorders. He is nervous from himself. Especially in the scenes where the first act ends, when he gets caught up in the pitch to the spirit of the Shrub, he is very strange and interior, and the similarity of his confident appearance evaporates. The man couldn't sell dollars for one dime.

This recites this to the cast that disrupts the dizziness of Culkin's regular character, like what he played in “Inheritance” and “Real Pain.” Projecting advantages behind a large house for long stretches requires highly polished theatrical skills. (In previous Broadway productions, Roma was played in heavyweights: Jomantegna, Leaf Schreiber, Bobby Cannavare; Al Pacino played him in the 1992 film. Long before the end of an eight-minute monologue that appears to be his big aria, he witheres.

The same can be said about Patrick Marber's staging at the palace around the area, rather than the playhouse. Even if the balcony closes, the actors need to work very hard, as Mamet is not a fan of the microphone. (There's no credits, but vocal coach Kate Wilson.) And it's not just the theatres that are too big. Inevitably, so is Scott Pasque's scenic design to fill it up. The Chinese restaurant, set in Act 1, is capable of hosting an attractive party of 100 people, although only two people on stage at once. “Glengarry” wants dirty intimacy, or at least illusion.

But, on any scale, the play is complete, so Mamet tests the director's bold structure. Two new characters from Medias Res are introduced in three consecutive scenes, each without explanation. First, we get salesman Shelley Leven (Odenkirk) currently at the final spot on the leaderboard, and John Williamson (Donald Webber Jr.), the manager responsible for the very important lead. Levene tries to ggle or bribe better prospects, but Williamson will no longer be.

Next up is Dave Moss (Burr) in second place and George Aaronow (McKean) in third place. The contrast between them is amazing. Aaronow, comfortable and strait-level, appears to have resigned to the system's dog work. Moss is boiling hot head with envy, it seems hell to destroy it. With elaborate indirect, he tries to lock Arronau into a plan to steal the office.

Then comes a scene intended to be an Act I climax in which Roma holds his mark, James Link (John Pillluccelo), with a button. But now the play has lost so much momentum that he will be stuck at the bottom of his bag, even if Culkin was Pacino. This is to some extent a result of Marber's fidelity to Mamet's minimalist spirit. The clumsy blackout that ends each scene isn't as dramatic as setting your phone to sleep. (Otherwise, good lighting comes from Jen Schrieber.) Also, the music doesn't cover the transition. The energy that has been discharged in the dark allows you to feel all kinds of energy.

If Mamet likes his own music, it's fair enough. Have you ever had no dialogue with pichrysanthemum and polyphonics like he did? Shapes the melody from rants, shapes obbligatos from lets, he creates the character from the sound, not the meaning of his words.

You can listen to the music intermittently in the first act, especially when Odenkirk and McKean find their rhythm in separate scenes. Both actors were comedians, among other things, but that also applies to bars who work hard on sweating and nervousness.

Either way, everyone improves in Act 2, when the action moves into a looted office and all the characters (and the policeman played by Howard W. Overschaun). Bali and Culkin are relaxed when they have less weight on their shoulders. Odenkirk, especially McKean Shine.

I think that reflects the change in the way “Glengarry” resonates in 2025. In 1984, the play gave a memorable form to the growing understanding that the underworld of despicable small business is a larger, more polite variety of microcosms. It suggests how social Darwinism lies at the root of our economic system, with its zero-sum game and dominant pyramids. There's a reason you'll never see Mitch and Murray, the agents' owners and contest creators, like Golden-Parachutes and 2-bit Godots.

The play is also dedicated to Harold Pinter. Now, thanks to the cultural power of “Glengarry” and the “American Buffalo” of Mamet, which opened on Broadway in 1977, both men's ideas have become traditional in the process of being kicked out of reality and being supported by one. The whole world, as many feel, is now a consortium of praise, some acknowledged by popular acclaim. In that context, two-bit players are too punished to worry and not greedy on the scale of Cadillac.

So, not only because this is a very patchy production, but nevertheless, the loser makes the biggest impression. Once a charming winner can no longer show anything new. Whether hopeless or dignified, defeat is doing so now.

Glengar Glenross
At the Palace Theatre in Manhattan until June 28th. glengarryonbroadway.com. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.