There are not one but two plays about desperate salesmen in New Haven these days. Down the street from the Yale Rep’s Death of a Salesman, a local theater company is putting on an intriguing production of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, the billingsgate-laden drama about huckstering real estate con artists from the boom-bust mid-1980s.
The play, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984, explores irresponsible, corrosive, body-and-soul-destroying business practices that clearly speak to us in this predatory subprime decade. And, alas, such duplicity is also very funny.
What makes the New Haven Theater Company (NTC)‘s production of Mamet’s play particularly arresting is that it is being presented in the cathedral-like marble lobby of the former Wachovia Bank building at Church and Crown.
Hey, when the money runs out, it’s clearly time for make-believe. And pecuniary-themed make-believe in a former Greek Revival monument to moolah sounds pretty irresistible, especially for a play known for its rapid-fire real estate dialogue (“Always be closing”) and take-no-prisoners insults, often of the ethnic variety.
The show will be performed Thursday through Sunday May 7 to May 24, with a modest ticket price of $10 and a starting time of 8:00 p.m. for every performance.
If you buy ten tickets to Glengarry, you go to the top of the list of charter members of a VIP group with a 50 percent interest in a corner lot of a gorgeous new development near the newest Florida … no, I get carried away.
The NHTC has been making a name for itself over the last few years by bringing theater to people who might not normally go. A chief means of doing this is mounting what director and NHTC founder T. Paul Lowry calls “site-specific works.” (Lowry is in the middle between actors George Kulp, left, and Mike Smith.)
During a recent dress rehearsal, George Kulp (on the left in the top picture with Steve Scarpa), who plays the talking-at-a-machine-gun clip Shelly Levene pointed out the exquisite irony of some of the words engraved on the marble walls of the cavernous bank building.
“You read integrity, trust, strength, reliability, and of course all of our characters are rats who represent exactly the opposite.”
Steve Scarpa, who plays Levene’s boss and nemesis, John Williamson, said during a break in dress rehearsal that he had personal memories of the bank.
“I remember,” said Scarpa as he positioned himself between two miniature Ionic columns, “that right about here my grandmother, who lived on Lombard Street, would take me to check things in her safe deposit box. Whoever thought I’d be back here doing Glengarry!”
When theater goers enter the bank, apart from the impressive interior dimensions, the first feature their eyes will alight on will likely be the bank vault. Ian Alderman, who plays George Aronow, one of meeker hustlers and a mark for the others, said, “Even though our play is not about a bank robbery, I think having this huge vault here adds a lot.”
In his non-thespian life Alderman runs the family’s long time scrap metal enterprise on Chapel Street, but appeared to have no business interest in the vault.
The play itself, with its two acts set in a ratty real estate office and cheesy restaurant, is being mounted just off the main lobby of the bank. That’s roughly in the area where loan officers in years gone by might have beckoned you to their desks, offering a deal you couldn’t refuse, but probably were wise if you did.
Lowry said that one of the special challenges of site specific theater is doing the tech, such as mounting lights. He and his colleagues bring everything with them, and that included, for the first time for this production, a complement of 100 chairs, which they bought used and cheap but solid, along with risers.
You think a used chair salesman hustled them? No, after several were tested by a reporter, the conclusion is they are not luxurious but comfortable.
So far the pre-opening response to the play has been very good, said Lowry, with 100 tickets sold in advance. To get yours, click here.
But be warned. Glengarry Glen Ross, which sits like a proud and respectful buzzard on the Arthur Miller classic and echoes it, is such a paen to salesmens’ profanity ridden patter, the F word is used about as liberally as articles and conjunction or mustard on a hot dog; actors performing in a movie version used to refer to Glengarry Glen Ross as the “Death of a F — — n’ Salesman” play.
Lowry, whose theater company is on the hunt for a permanent home, said he’d love to see the bank used on a regular basis as a theater. “There’s a kitchen and a whole area that could have V.I.P. seating,” he said, but that fate is not likely for the building.
The new owners, Rose Smart Growth Investment Fund, are, according to Lowry renovating, repositioning, and greening the property for leasing. In the meantime, Lowry added, they obviously like the idea of people re-acquainting themselves with one of the city’s most impressive interior spaces through going to plays.
Other actors in the play not previously mentioned include Peter Chenot (left), Erich Greene, and Kevin Smith, all of whom appeared charmingly logorrheic, sleazy and in exceptionally shiny suits.
nice read