This production of Glengarry Glen Ross has all the ingredients for a theatrical blockbuster: David Mamet's American classic about dysfunctional masculine rage, directed by Wilson Milam (who staged a searing production last year of The Seafarer, an Irish play about alcoholic masculine rage), performed by some old lions of Seattle theater (John Aylward, Charles Leggett, R. Hamilton Wright).
The production mostly fulfills its promise, giving Mamet's vicious, midlevel real-estate salesmen—who try to plead, bully, bribe, and steal their way to the top—new guts and teeth for tearing into each other. They kick boxes and trash cans, slam doors, smoke furiously, and chew on each other's egos.
Glengarry immediately throws down an ace with a spectacular, cinematic set change courtesy of designer Eugene Lee (the production designer for Saturday Night Live for over 30 years). The audience watches young boss John Williamson (MJ Sieber) walk out of an upstairs door, down some stairs, through the dingy Chicago real-estate office where most of the action happens, and out a door into what looks like an alley. Then a blackout and, in an instant, the stage has become a lurid red Chinese restaurant where a hard-luck agent named Shelly Levene (Aylward) pleads with Williamson to sell him some promising leads. The opening-night audience gasped, applauded, and surrendered themselves to Milam and his ensemble for the rest of the evening.
But the performance wasn't flawless: At the top of the first act, the actors played Mamet's staccato dialogue too broadly and self-consciously, coaxing knowing laughs from the audience (look! We're talking Mamet-talk!) but missing the opening scene's critical desperation and impotence. In an interview with the Seattle Times, the director declared: "I'm a punctuation freak! Every contraction Mamet uses is meaningful. So we're spending a lot of time on that." It is possible they spent a little too much time.
The actors relaxed into the text as it continued and, by the second act, they bristled with rage, both hot and cold, and found their balance between comedy and pathos. Wright, who typically plays friendly goofs, has grown admirably into the brutality of his character, Ricky Roma. (The audience seemed to recoil in their seats as he snarled at his younger boss: "You fucking shit! Where did you learn your trade, you stupid fucking cunt?! You idiot! Whoever told you that you could work with men?! Oh, I'm gonna have your job, shithead... I don't care whose nephew you are... who you know... whose dick you're sucking on, you're going out!") Leggett delivers a show-stealing, righteously angry monologue, and a bellowing argument between Wright, Leggett, and Aylward is like watching three bull walruses trying to tear each other to death.
The old debate about whether big theaters produce enough new, local plays has been flaring up in Seattle lately. (Local playwright Paul Mullin is writing broadsides about localism on his website, director Bart Sher took a playful swipe at provincialism in his farewell address at Intiman Theatre a few weeks ago, and theater-advocate organization TPS is hosting a forum on the question this March.) But the Rep's production of Glengarry Glen Ross is a convincing and fierce argument for the canon. It's an experience Seattle audiences deserve. 
