Kieran Culkin, Michael McKean, Donald Webber Jr., John Pirruccello, Howard W. Overshown, Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr (Photo: Emilio Madrid)

Glengarry Glen Ross

Reviewed by Marc Miller

Are there two Kieran Culkins? The one who shows up in the first act of the uneven revival of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross is, let's say it, something of a disaster. He's slower and softer than everyone who has preceded him, throwing Mamet's galloping but precise rhythms totally off. Intermission passes, and the Culkin we next see is sharp, biting, funny, and in keeping with the cutthroat proceedings surrounding him. Yet we're still not entirely buying it. It's symptomatic of this production, uncertainly directed by Patrick Marber, that we don't know what we're going to get next, and that's not because Mamet keeps throwing us curves. This is familiar material by now, and it needs a more certain hand than Marber's.

For one thing, there's the problem of where to look. Scott Pask's set-a lavish but moldering Chinese restaurant for Act One, the banquettes a Cantonese cliché and the potted palms dying, a ravaged real estate office for Act Two-is just too damn big. A consequence, perhaps, of having to fill the stage of the Palace, definitely the wrong house for this one. But Marber fails to indicate where the focus is, and if you concentrate on Culkin yelling stage left, you'll miss what the other often fine actors are doing stage right. He also has them shouting across the stage at one another, which I suppose might happen in a bustling Chicago den of thieves, but why not just reblock?

John Pirruccello, Kieran Culkin (Photo: Emilio Madrid)

And there's plenty of shouting. With Mamet, anger is the default mode, and there's a lot of anger as the salesmen of this unnamed entity try to hustle wary customers, and each other. Williamson (Donald Webber, Jr., an island of relative calm, until provoked) is resisting the entreaties of Shelley Levene (Bob Odenkirk) for better sales leads. Levene was a top salesman till a few years back, and he's getting increasingly unnerved as his figures drop. In this Mamet every-other-word-begins-with-f universe, the two trade barbs, seek reconciliation, negotiate over the worthless parcels they're trying to unload, and maneuver past an impasse with a balletic grace, accentuated by the excellent Odenkirk's body language and raspy, desperate delivery.

Next, two more salesmen in the same space: conniving, racist Dave Moss (Bill Burr) and laid-back, for this bunch, George Aaronow (Michael McKean, a standout). Moss has a highly unethical plan to grab the better leads ("It is a crime. It's also very safe"), and Aaronow appears to get sucked into it, like a speck of dust into a vacuum cleaner. The energy's high here, making it all the more disconcerting when star salesman Richard Roma (Culkin) brings it way down in the following scene, with a nebbishy sales prospect (John Pirruccello). The banter is fast (the whole first act is under 40 minutes), but the tone is off, a sitcom feel when we need a python wrapping itself around its quarry, and it's a relief to encounter the savage, scheming Roma that Culkin becomes after the break.

Even here, though, something's not working. Culkin possesses a milder persona than previous Romas-Joe Mantegna, Liev Schreiber, Bobby Cannavale, Al Pacino in the fine 1992 film version-and we're more impressed that he memorized these elaborate Mamet digressions than with his actual interpretation of them. Really, everyone else is more interesting. Aaronow is struggling with an office calamity, Moss is surly, Levene is exultant over a perceived change in his sales luck, Williamson just wants to restore order, and a hard-nosed detective (Howard W. Overshown) is interrogating the lot of them. Roma's trying to talk his sales prospect out of canceling the deal he just made, and Culkin wears the fake-friendly manner suited to the task well. But we never quite buy him as a snake. That just isn't Kieran Culkin.

John Pirruccello, Kieran Culkin (Photo: Emilio Madrid)

The early-'80s atmosphere is well represented by Pask's rumpled suits and Jen Schriever's lighting-dim and intimate for the restaurant, harsh and industrial for the office. And Mamet's dialogue, exuberantly vulgar and hectoring, can still pack a punch, when Culkin isn't soft-pedaling it. Burr isn't afraid to exhibit Moss's rapaciousness, McKean correctly keeps Aaronow just this side of likable, Webber might be the best Williamson I've ever seen.

But the larger problem of this Glengarry Glen Ross may be that time has caught up with it. How fresh and provocative it seemed in 1984, when such unbridled avarice, deceit, profanity, and corruption were novelties on the stage. Mamet has had many imitators since then, and we're less appalled and riveted by such behaviors now. Everyone's out for himself, the male ego is insatiable, capitalism runs on lies, masculinity is made of ranting and posturing and asserting authority. Really, what else is new?

Glengarry Glen Ross
At the Palace Theatre, 160 W. 47^th Street
Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes
Tickets: Glengarryonbroadway.com