Deep Dish delivers drama 'Glengarry Glen Ross'

There are a few givens when it comes to a David Mamet play: profanity, liberal doses of chauvinism, rhythmic and complex dialogue. And especially with Glengarry Glen Ross—arguably Mamet’s best, most famous work—the script will offer few surprises.

Regardless, these inevitabilities don’t make the piece any easier to perform. It is intricate and complicated with deftly intertwined lines that an unprepared or untalented actor will likely butcher. This just compounds the amount of credit due to the Deep Dish Theater Company, who are currently presenting Glengarry Glen Ross at their intimate theater inside Chapel Hill’s University Mall.

The play tells the story of a competition between four salesmen at a struggling real estate office in Chicago. The top producer gets a Cadillac, the second a set of steak knives and the other two pink slips. These stakes seem high enough in the abstract, but Mamet makes them a matter of life and death. Nothing less than the characters’ existences seem to be at risk.

Such narrative intensity demands a similar velocity of performance, and the company sweats blood on their well-designed set. In particular, actors David Ring (Levene), John Murphy (Moss) and Joshua Purvis (Roma) are incendiary, and the one scene where all three are on stage at once is breathlessly intense. Although there are times when a subtler approach might have achieved an equally convincing—and probably more nuanced—effect, it’s enjoyable and enthralling to watch the characters dress each other down with the full brutality of Mamet’s hypermasculine ego.

The other actors hold their own as well, particularly Byron Jennings as Williamson; Jennings’ handling of the character’s delayed comeuppance recalls Kevin Spacey’s performance in the brilliant 1992 film adaptation. That said, there were times when a few of the more minor parts seemed to lose the thread of conversation, though these snags were usually trivial. 

The set, a dimly lit, generic Chinese restaurant prior to intermission and a squalorous and ransacked office post-break, is atmospheric and eye-catching. They supply a gritty realism to the characters’ diatribes and lectures, a reality that is beautifully phrased and viscerally wrought. 

Glengarry Glen Ross will be performed tonight through Saturday at the Deep Dish Theater. For more information visit deepdishtheater.org