This is the third of a series of 4 blog posts about the competing plays in this year's Theatre Ontario Festival. These plays are the winners of the four regional festivals held earlier in the year.
GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS
by David Mamet
Presented by Gateway Theatre Guild
(QUONTA entry)
Those of you who read my blog posts about the QUONTA Festival in March will perhaps remember my extreme negative reaction to the script of this show. I still don't like it, but this time around I am shifting my focus much more clearly to the production and performance of the play.
Right off the bat as the lights came up, I realized that the back of the set had become much more visible, as had the three men lounging at the bar. The lighting was brighter than before, detail and colour both therefore became clearer, and (I think) a lighter colour of light had been chosen -- at any rate, it no longer looked to me like a stripper bar masquerading as a Chinese restaurant. I also found that the impressive soundscape of outdoor background noises seemed less intrusive. Different levels? Or was it simply that a more brightly-lit space pushed the sound more into the background?
Projection from all characters was clearer throughout. Partly, they were aided by the more user-friendly space of the Imperial Theatre in Sarnia (as compared to the cavernous Community Theatre Centre in Sault Ste. Marie), but I certainly had the impression that all the actors were working much more in projection and in diction. They were also materially aided by the brighter lighting plot in Act One. It may sound odd, but in fact it is much easier to hear people if you can clearly see them! This difference was especially notable in Roma's first long monologue. It's actually one of the most poetic parts of a script which is largely gritty and unlovely, and the first half (delivered upstage by the bar) was utterly inaudible before. Now, every word registered. I also sensed (and I could be wrong) that the entire show had tightened up and ran more smoothly.
Among the characters, I was most struck this time by the work of Brad Carr as Dave Moss. I felt as if he had acquired an additional layer of guile, and that the fork in his tongue was about an inch longer than before (speaking metaphorically, of course!). Certainly, his face seemed to have acquired significant extra expressiveness. The rapid-fire, intercutting dialogue with George Aaronow, played by Mitch Belanger, shot out crystal clear. It's interesting that I had no trouble following the trains of thought of both men at the same time as they kept cutting each other off every second.
Rod Carley's portrayal of Richard Roma gained extra resonance because his very long monologue in the third scene of Act One was now totally heard. His performance was a masterpiece of subtle and smarmy persuasion, leading his intended victim slowly and easily by degrees up to the moment where the trap would be ever-so-gently sprung. James Lingk, the intended victim (played by John Hewitt), again made the most of the puzzled bewildered expression on his face which said, as loud as words could have done, "I think there's something wrong here if I could just get a minute or two to figure it out."
The villain of the piece, such as he is, is John Williamson, the young office manager. We're told that he got the job because he's somebody's nephew, and it's quite plain in the text that nobody in the office likes him. Morgan Bedard played the role with such an unyielding expression on his face, and such a cold, icy disregard for anyone in his voice, that hating him seemed like a natural thing to do. In the moment in Act Two when it looks like he is going to be fired, all I could think was, "Looks good on you, buddy." And that's just where this character needs to take you.
The story, however, pivots around Verlyn Plowman's portrayal of Shelley Levene. Something, by the way, that didn't register last time I saw the show: the two men at the bottom of the food chain in this office just happen to be the two who have Jewish-sounding names. Nothing gets said about this in the script as far as I heard; the racist jokes and comments we hear are all directed against Polacks and Pakis. But it's there all the same, and I'm sure it's not accidental.
Very soon, we learn from Shelley's own words that he is living in a past that no longer exists. His glory days are over, have been over for several years, but he continues to insist that he is important and significant in the pecking order when he is plainly nothing of the sort. To adjudicator Bea Quarrie I owe the observation that this is a darker, seamier amplification of the tragedy of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. We don't see Shelley die, but as he's hauled off to be questioned by the police I for one sense that this will happen in his immediate future, as his entire life has collapsed around him. Plowman's performance lacked the necessary air of desperation in the first act, but he gathered it all together at the climax of the play and made his final destruction a tragic event indeed.
Pride goeth before a fall, and Shelley certainly illustrates that. Feeling a little sorry for him is still the closest I can come to having any emotional interaction with any of these unpleasant characters. That doesn't alter my admiration for the considerable skill and careful thought that director and company brought to their performance.
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