My husband wanted to see a Broadway play. I wanted to see a Broadway play too. I had already seen a few and always enjoyed a comedy, a musical, or a combination of both. When it was announced that "Glengarry Glen Ross", David Mamet's 1984 Pulitzer Prize winning play about salesmen competing for their piece of the American Dream, was to be re-staged for a short engagement I knew I would not be seeing any singing and dancing.
Mr. Y. loves the 1992 movie version of "Glengarry Glenn Ross"d. He has been a salesperson for much of his career and some aspects of the Type A personalities quirks and attitudes resonated with him. Plus, how could you NOT love a movie starring Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris, and Alan Arkin? In my cases I could NOT love the movie when the setting is a Chicago sales office full of cutthroat, egotistical sales people competing for sales leads. Their mantra is "ABC, A-lways B-e C-losing". Or the break room conversation that ends with "Put that coffee down. Coffee is for closers only". Watching people work in that type of environment, having to scramble for compensation based on their ability to sell a product to people that don't need that product and enduring the profanity (LOTS of profanity), put-downs, and derogatory comments had me squirming before I even found my seat in the theatre.
Mr Y. was beyond thrilled to be there. I was less so. But since Al Pacino was playing the lead (albeit in a different role than he played in the movie) and the cast was entirely made up of actors I recognized from TV, if I was going to endure a dark drama at least it would be entertaining. And entertaining it was. There were funny parts in the play that I didn't remember from the movie. I didn't leave the theatre with a pit in my stomach from watching confrontational characters chew and gnaw at each other to get ahead.
Now that Mr. Y had been introduced to Broadway I'll make sure next time he goes he leaves humming a catchy tune from from his first musical.
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