‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ @ The Classics Theatre Project
Promotional photos by Kate Voskova
—Rickey Wax
If profanity were currency, Glengarry Glen Ross could fund the national debt and still have enough left over to buy everyone in the audience a set of steak knives. David Mamet’s 1984 Pulitzer Prize–winning drama about cutthroat real estate salesmen is a linguistic knife fight where the words slash deeper than any blade.
Mamet’s gift is his ear for the music of desperation. He writes in a rhythm that’s deceptively casual—sentences stutter, overlap, get cut off mid-thought—but it’s a calculated chaos. The smallest pauses hang like nooses. A line as simple as “Wait a second” can feel like a loaded pistol on the table.
At The Classics Theatre Project, director John Pszyk leans into that simmer, opening the first act in a dimly lit Chinese restaurant that feels almost conspiratorial. The cozy glow and hushed clinks of glasses could lull you into thinking you’re watching a low-stakes lunch meeting. But Mamet’s dialogue tips the audience off—we’re watching men fight for their livelihoods under the guise of casual conversation. Anthony Magee’s Shelly Levene pleads, cajoles, and all but begs office manager John Williamson (John Cameron Potts) for the “premium” Glengarry Highlands leads. Magee’s Levene isn’t still “the Machine” of old; he’s a man watching his prime fade in the rearview mirror.
From there, the restaurant becomes a revolving confessional. Dave Moss (Michael Miller) hatches a plan to rob the office. George Aaronow (Mark Craig) squirms in moral discomfort. And Ricky Roma (Joey Folsom), Mamet’s slickest serpent, seduces James Lingk (Andrew Manning) into a sale with a meandering philosophical riff about life, chance, and Florida real estate that’s half existentialism, half hustle.
Act Two drops us into a different world entirely: the ransacked real estate office. The set design by Adriana Sandoval nails the disarray—open windows, scattered papers, the stale tang of failure in the air. Someone’s broken in and stolen the prized leads. Who did it? The play makes us part detective, part voyeur, watching the men scramble as Louis Shopen’s lighting switches from the warm amber of Act One to the cold fluorescence of corporate exposure.
It’s here Magee’s Levene gets his brief, shining comeback. Bursting in with the swagger of a man reborn, he crows, “Get the chalk! I closed ‘em! Eight units. Eighty-two grand.” For a moment, he’s “Levene the Machine” again, regaling Roma with the kind of old-school sales story that drips with pride: “I locked on them. All on them, nothing on me… They signed, Ricky. It was great...”
The closing beats deliver one of Mamet’s most poetic juxtapositions. Levene and Roma sit across from each other, the old lion and the young predator, sharing a rare moment of mutual respect. Roma calls him “the Machine,” as if honoring a gladiator past his prime. Yet moments later, Detective Baylen (Jason Davis) drags Levene into the back office, the door shutting on what’s left of his dignity.
What makes Glengarry Glen Ross timeless is its ruthless honesty about the human condition: people will do anything when cornered—lie, cheat, betray—and still tell themselves it’s just business. The desperation to matter, to prove one still “has it,” is as potent a motivator as hunger.
TCTP’s production understands that Mamet’s play is about survival. Every pause, every half-sentence, every “fuck you” carries the weight of men clinging to relevance in a world that has already moved on. And in that final image—Shelly being pulled away while Roma plots his next move—we’re left with a bitter truth: in Mamet’s world, there’s no gold watch at the end of the rainbow, just the slow fade of the spotlight.
WHEN: August 1-31, 2025
WHERE: 15650 Addison Road, Addison TX
WEB: theclassicstheatreproject.com
