Swimming with sharks

ON THE MORNING after the first preview of Glengarry Glen Ross at Dublin’s Gate Theatre, it’s not a surprise to find director Doug Hughes looking relaxed in the Gresham Hotel foyer. The previous night’s performance of David Mamet’s acclaimed play was a slick, gripping affair, not just due to source material but a cast containing some of Ireland’s finest stage actors.

“It’s a such a juggernaut of a play,” confesses Hughes, “and one that many wonderful actors want to be in. Michael [Colgan, of The Gate Theatre] and I both felt it would be magnetic to some superb Irish actors.”

The actors in question include a brilliant Owen Roe, as a straw clutching and frustrated Shelley Levene and Barry McGovern as George Aaronow, who answers questions with a Beckett inflection. They are ably assisted by Denis Conway, Peter Hanly, John Cronin and Patrick Joseph Byrnes.

“I had seen Owen Roe in Faith Healer, Dennis Conway in Enda Walsh’s work and seen McGovern in Watt. They were fabled names to me and when you have these staggeringly talented people available to you, it’s just a question of who to cast where.”

Glengarry Glen Ross is about a group of salesmen – of varying age and ability – working in a Chicago office, all jostling to make a buck and outdo their co-workers.

The sole American in the cast – Reg Rogers – plays Richard Roma, the character Hughes says, “every actor wants to play”. Rogers is magnetic on stage and delivers some of the best lines in a play that is steeped in language. “You wouldn’t have Pinter without Beckett and you wouldn’t have Mamet without Pinter,” offers Hughes. “There are sections of the play – and it’s ridiculous to make a comparison to Brian Friel – that are in their own way, lush, florid outpourings of language.”

A sizeable amount of dialogue is peppered with profanity. It is not only central to the way these men interact; it also has a singsong quality and a cadence of its own.

“I’m glad you say that,” says Hughes. “These men use words as weapons and as a bulwark against humiliation. Like a lot of great plays, this has the devil in it, and the language is part of that. This story displays the very worst in us on stage, and allows it to just run around – and it’s so liberating to see those tensions released. The play is venting about things that we try to bury in polite society.”

Pulsing through the play is a menacing sense of masculinity. Ego and testosterone clash and affect a pace that is predicated on a competitive hierarchy in the never-seen Mitch and Murray office. It may be a man’s world, but there is a very specific male coda at work and Hughes admits he had a very specific approach to the production to capture that.

“That maleness defines the chemistry and the experience of the play,” says Hughes. “It’s fuelled by that terror of humiliation. Before I came over to begin work on this production, I watched a lot of Sam Peckinpah movies, especially The Wild Bunch, and also Scorsese’s Mean Streets and Goodfellas. The play cites the idea of the lone adventurer out there in the world trying to wrest a living from a harsh world. But it’s also locker room.”

Mamet’s play is almost 30 years old, but there are definite parallels with contemporary Ireland. Greed, corruption, nefarious land deals abound – with each character fitfully trying to stay above water.

Peter Hanly plays James Lingk, who is cowed into an expensive deal. His panicked portrayal of a man weighed down by economic forces will strike a chord with many in this country.

“At the moment, we’re all more aware than usual of the perils of overextension, so it seemed like a good time for revival. It’s clearly not a play about ‘right now’,” says Hughes, “but there’s an off-centre topicality to it. It’s about the struggle to get on in life, the fever of competition, the brutality of survival, and of making it in life.”

One striking historical aspect of the play is the lack of technology. Here is a business world that predates the internet, mobile phones and laptops. Their absence doesn’t dent the fact that Glengarry is, as Hughes says, “well on its way to being a classic”.

The play’s reputation has also been cemented by a seminal film version. Made in 1992, and starring Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon and Alec Baldwin, it has its own mythology. Did Hughes have any fears about reclaiming such a high-profile film back into theatre?

“The experience of the play is very different to the film. The film is wonderful . . . it has a melancholy stateliness to it, but to see the play unfold in real time, to see that the actors don’t get another take that night, is very exhilarating. It’s a great complement to the film. The writing in the stage production is even tighter and more ferocious. It was considerably softened for the film.”

Ireland’s theatrical history offers a plunderable wealth of stories. Hughes’ family have a close connection with Ireland (he also holds an Irish passport) but this is his first time to work here. He comments on numerous upcoming playwrights and how “fertile” Ireland is for drama.

Would he like to come here to work on a play by one of our drama behemoths? “My anxiety would be much higher if I was to have the presumption to work on Beckett or Synge or Murphy,” he says with a smile.

He has been working in theatre for most of his life, with occasional excursions into television. The link between the two is, he says, obvious in shows such as The Wire and Breaking Bad, which are “the serial novels of our time”. Film holds an attraction for him, and he has been developing an independent film, but theatre remains his unstinting passion.

“There is an intensity of life around a production and coming to Dublin to work on this has been one of the most revivifying things I’ve ever done. By going somewhere else, it makes you look at things anew – and that’s very stimulating.”

Glengarry Glen Ross is at The Gate Theatre, Dublin until July 14th