Fun and Profit

Glengarry Glen Ross

Written By David Mamet

Directed by Mark Prascak

At the Currier House Fishbowl

Through this weekend

THE director of Glengarry Glen Ross is the same guy who thought it would be a good idea to throw a bunch of actors into the Adams House swimming pool and charge people to watch them splash around. Mark Prascak, having toweled off from Peerless Gynt, is at it again with David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross, and his aimless, rampant creativity detracts from an excellent script and some enjoyable acting.

For starters, Prascak doesn't bother with any nonsense like putting the play on a stage. Far too simple. Instead, he plops the action at two tables in the middle of the Currier House Fishbowl and places the audience at other tables in a U-shape around them. As a result, the audience sees half the actors from behind for the first act. Once, the actors switch seats so everyone can see their faces. Appreciated, but awkward.

In the second act the action takes place throughout and even outside the room, and Prascak makes the audience stretch and twist continuously to comprehend everything that's going on. The actors rotate a lot in an attempt to display the play in front of the whole audience, but, inevitably, they inconvenience half the audience half the time. While the staging could be used to highlight the play's interaction between complex and often frustrated businessmen, in Prascak's hands it becomes an irritation.

One character that I saw and enjoyed from my vantage point was the sharklike philosopher Richard Roma (Nick Raposo). The divorce lawyer on L.A. Law only wishes he were this evil. Raposo lures the audience with Roma's hedonistic world-view, then traps them in his repulsive character. "What's beyond all measure?" he asks the hapless James Lingk (Chris Ortiz) from a table away. "That's a sickness. That's a trap. There is no measure. Only greed." Roma embodies greed and manipulation. He pulls his boss, John Williamson (John Zedd), over here, shoves James Lingk over there, and pretty soon he's on top of the heap. Richard Roma and his merciless machinations are impressively executed, almost worth the whiplash.

Andrew Osborne's portrayal of the near-perfect jerk Shelley Levine also turned my head. Levine's voice booms at the most tactless moments, and he waves his cigar mercilessly at anyone within striking distance. Osborne turns lines meant simply for character development into some of the best lines in the show, and he interrupts Williamson and even himself frequently and flawlessly: "There's more than one man for the...Put a...wait a second, put a proven man out...and you watch, now wait a second--and you watch your dollar volumes." His moods, ranging from quavering confidence to cockiness to nervous resignation, made me glad I could see his face most of the time.

Mercifully, various copyright laws and actors' objections restrict Prascak's creativity. This is why I wasn't greeted at my table by a styrofoam penis, and why the actors didn't strap on plastic penises before the performance. These restrictions weren't enough, however, to prevent the teasers from aggressively advertising the f-word or the fliers presenting a drawing of two men charging at each other with ridiculously oversized guess-whats. I should have known what I was in for when I saw the flier with Prascak's name given the same billing as Mamet's. But if you have the endurance to withstand Prascak's vindictive pretensions, Glengarry Glen Ross may be worth the trip to the Quad.