Beck Center’s ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ is a remarkable thing

 

Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal

 

David Mamet’s 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winning “Glengarry Glen Ross,” on stage at the Beck Center for the Arts, is a most intriguing play. For it possesses no characters we care about yet results in a production we are glued to.

 

Yes I know, this last sentence starts with a conjunction and ends with a proposition. Get used to it, because the two hours of “Glengarry Glen Ross” is filled with Mamet-speak that creates absolutely captivating dialogue out of tough talk void of grammatical eloquence, interrupted fragmentary utterances consisting of little more than ifs and buts, and frequent rapid-fire profanity.  It is spoken by a roomful of genuinely unlikable characters imbued with toxic, unbridled testosterone and deeply-rooted anger management issues, who say a lot but never what they mean and never to fruition.

 

It is a remarkable thing.

 

 For more of this review, go to: www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/bob_abelman/