On the Rocks: An Interview with the director of Glengarry Glen Ross

Can you tell our readers a little about Glengarry Glen Ross?

Glengarry Glen Ross won David Mamet a Pulitzer in 1984. It has since been staged around the world and made into an Academy Award-nominated film starring one of the greatest ensemble casts ever assembled (check it out, but not until after you see Glengarry this week in the Byre). It tells the story of four desperate real estate salesmen as they compete in an agency-wide sales contest. First prize is a Cadillac. Second prize: a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired. The stakes are high and the pressure is on—exceptional theatre begins when the shit is but a centimetre from the fan.

What drew you to this particular script?

I’ve wanted to stage Glengarry since my first year in St Andrews. No, I’ve wanted to stage it since I learned the word fuck. It’s Mamet’s best-known work, but until now I never felt I could find or harness the manpower to put it on. There’s no room for a weak link with a script like this: Aaronow (Stephen Kelly) is the hopelessly lost, Levene (Lorenzo de Boni) is the pathetic has-been, Lingk (Sebastian Carrington-Howell) is the pussy-whipped buyer, Roma (Conor McKeown) is the golden boy, Williamson (Alex Levine) is the manipulative asshole, Moss (Frazer Hadfield) is the more reckless, even bigger asshole. Each must bring every ounce of energy and firepower he has or the entire production will collapse around him.

Mamet became famous for his style, marked by cynical, precise dialogue, manipulation of language, rampant profanity and casual racism. Mamet speak feels real, not in the sense that someone you know talks the way he writes, but in the sense that someone somewhere must. His characters are caricatures, berating one another with spectacular insults that are Shakespearean in construction. The dialogue overlaps, sentences trail off and remain unfinished. Every pause is intentional and must be exact. The challenge of performing Mamet is in knowing not your own lines, but everyone else’s.

With so many great events happening this week as part of On the Rocks, what do you think makes Glengarry Glen Ross stand out?

I love it when you folks covertly sneak the word stand into your questions. This will be my fourth of four On the Rocks festivals. I feel connected with this insane and wonderful week. And for the first time in the four-year history of the festival, only one play (no ice, no chaser) will grace the Byre’s stage. I’m looking forward to an evening of a capella, performances by the St Andrews Revue and Blind Mirth, a trip around the world of dance and Princess Ida, but Glengarry will have to live up to its place as de facto headliner of a festival that has produced such magnificent theatre over the last four years.

When I put seven strong actors together on a stage as exceptional as the Byre’s, I expect great things. I hope you will too.

Glengarry Glen Ross goes up at 7:30pm on Wednesday, April 18th and Thursday, April 19th in the Byre Theatre’s A. B. Paterson auditorium as part of the 2012 On the Rocks festival. Tickets are available for £6 from the Byre Theatre.