Glengarry Glen Ross – David Mamet

A co-production between the Municipal and Regional Theatre of Veria and Poreia Theatre.

First performance: Tuesday, November 27, 2001

The performance was staged at Poreia Theatre from November 29, 2001 to April 28, 2002.

It was then presented in Veria from Wednesday, April 17 to Sunday, April 28 for a total of 10 performances at the Arts Space.

A brief synopsis of the play

Glengarry Glen Ross transports us to the harsh world of the real estate business. The story revolves around four real estate salesmen in Chicago and their share of the American Dream. The play takes place during the final days of a sales competition imposed by the company’s headquarters. The salesman who closes the most sales will be rewarded with a Cadillac, the second-best with a set of steak knives, while the other two face termination.

The first act unfolds in a Chinese restaurant. In the first scene, Levene tries to convince Williamson, the office manager, to trust him with better leads, meaning those clients with higher income and, therefore, more chances of purchasing land. These leads are distributed among the salesmen based on their previous sales, so whoever achieves the most sales always has a share of the better leads. Levene tries every means to persuade Williamson: He boasts, threatens, pleads, flatters, and ultimately attempts bribery, but without success. Although Williamson momentarily seems swayed, he refuses to be “bought off”.

In the second scene, Moss and Aaronow discuss the company’s unfair policies towards employees. We witness Moss’s anxious attempt to persuade Aaronow to break into their own office and steal the best leads, so that they can sell them to their competitor, Graff.

In the third scene, the audience has the opportunity to closely observe a “pitch”: Roma, the top salesman in the office, approaches a potential “client” (for Roma, everyone is a potential “client”) named Lingk, delivering a loud monologue about the absence of morality in the world and the responsibility of every individual to be the master of their own destiny. However, even in this deception, there are fragments of truth, simply because Roma is a very skilled salesman.

Source: Poreia Theatre