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The excellent revival of David Mamet’s GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS (now through Sunday at the H&R Block City Stage downstairs in Union Station) reminds us that, in the generation that preceded Judd Apatow, men didn’t sit around getting high and talking about their feelings. The real estate guys who populate Mamet’s play have balls– big brass ones.  They work shitty leads, go out and close a sale in spite, and nobody gets in their way,  goddam it.  They bite Steve Carrell’s head off and trash his friggin “Office.”

The KC Actors Theatre production reminds us, too, that great theater does not require a $200,000 budget and multi-million dollar organization. Nope–seven well-cast actors under the thoughtful guidance of a director who knows the material will do the trick. GLENGARRY’s got it, proving once again how indispensible KCAT is to the local theater scene.

It helps when your little acting company includes the best talent in town. David Fritts and Scott Cordes tear the place up as two pushy, cock-of-the-walk salesmen hell-bent on winning a Cadillac. Phil Fiorini got just the right pathos out of the poor sot who gets flim-flammed by Corde’s Ricky Roma– and hasn’t the balls of his own to face his wife over it. 

Brian Paulette does a nice turn as the young office manager who doesn’t have a clue about the life and death struggle his salesman are going through. And Stuart Rider is appropriately befuddled as the poor guppy trying to swim along in this tank of sharks.

But the emotional heart and center of gravity of this GLENGARRY rests on Victor Raider-Wexler’s permanently stooped shoulders. His Shelly Levene–Shelly “the Machine,” living on past laurels and way beyond his prime– embodies the pitiful future—and therefore the tragedy– of these hopeless souls. I saw Alan Alda do the role in the recent Broadway revival; I think Raider-Wexler got his arms around Shelly more completely. When Cordes’ Ricky Roma calls Shelley part of “a dying breed,” you nod your head, having seen the man drown right there before your eyes.

John Rensenhouse does a fine job leading his gentlemen through their paces. The Act I scene between Fritts and Rider may be the best 15 minutes of local theater this season and a grad school thesis on how to act Mamet. I didn’t agree with his choice on using the video at the top of the show; otherwise, I thought John nailed it.

Don’t go if the word fuck bothers you (you’re probably not reading this blog either, in that case). Mamet calls em like he hears em– and his ear for the cadences and dynamics of six sorry real estate salesmen, pitching hopes and dreams to hopeless insomniacs is note-perfect. It’s great theater at its most elemental. Check it out before it closes Sunday.

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