Automobile magnate and paragon of American wealth in the 1980s Lee Iacocca once said that­ “The trick is to make sure you don’t die waiting for prosperity to come.” A poster of Iococca hangs on the back wall in the real estate company where the salesmen in the Gate’s production of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross ply their trade, and each has taken Iacocca’s commandment to heart. Virtually every conversation and every deed carried out in this two-act play is, in one way or another, part of a big, desperate sell.

Nearly thirty years after it was first produced, Glengarry Glen Ross remains a quintessential portrayal of the wing-tip shoe wearing, scotch-swilling salesmen who do the dirty, unethical work of capitalism. With its relentless, expletive-drenched dialogue, it both perfectly captures a moment in time – the business culture of Reagan’s America – and stands as an almost archetypal expression of the moral vacuum of late capitalism. American director Doug Hughes brings Mamet’s vision vividly to life in this new production.

Proceedings begin dizzyingly in a gaudy Chinese restaurant with red sequined curtains with three conversations. There’s down-on-his-luck Shelley ‘The Machine’ Levine (Owen Roe) trying to convince office manager John Williamson (John Cronin) to give him the cherished ‘leads’ that will allow him to revive his career. Then combustible Moss (Denis Conway) seems to talk the hapless George Aaranow (Barry McGovern) into an office robbery, all before Richard Roma ( Reg Rogers) holds forth his philosophy on ‘absolute’ morality – to synthesise, anything goes – in an effort to seduce the hopelessly naïve James Lingk (Peter Hanly) to purchase property. Underneath the deluge of swearing, we learn these salesmen are all colleagues in a high-pressured workplace where dodgy land is sold to unwitting consumers. Mamet does not simply seek to blur the line between businessmen and thieves. The overriding sentiment of Glengarry Glen Ross is that the business of America is criminal.

Yet these rogues and hucksters maintain a shred of likeability thanks in part of a few larger than life performances. Rogers is magnetic as Roma, the firm’s champion salesman and utterer of most of Mamet’s best lines (“Always tell the truth. It’s the easiest thing to remember”). He is also a restless physical actor, whether he’s talking with his hands or unbuttoning his cufflinks as sign that he’s ready to get down to business. Owen Roe’s Shelley Levine is the closest thing we have to a sympathetic character, veering from the pathetic to the heroic and back again. His greatest asset in business and the source of his ultimate undoing is “his big mouth”. The hairstyle of Barry McGovern’s George Aaronow – grey, overly long on the sides, covering over the ears – perfectly encapsulates the mentality of this defeated, hangdog man seeing out his days in a business world that’s long left him behind. Many of the characters share a nostalgia for a dying code of ethics between salesmen, and as John Williamson, office manager and the youngest employee of the office, John Cronin embodies this brave new corporate world. When he ultimately reports Levine to the police for the office robbery simply because he doesn’t like him, it seems there is no longer honour among thieves.

There is an undercurrent of tawdriness in Neil Patel’s set – both the Chinese restaurant and the dishevelled office where the second act is set, with its black and white tiled floor, blackboard with sales stats and the essential watercooler. These are men who have no time or interest in life’s finery, and that’s also evident in Joan Bergin’s costume design: grey and pinstriped suits of no great quality. Michael Chybowski’s lighting design is clever, especially in the office scene, with a spotlight over the water cooler and a number of office lamps used to great effect.

In the second act, one of the characters describes the essential task of being a salesman as “selling dreams”. Perhaps that’s also the job of the playwright. In this hugely-enjoyable production of Glengarry Glen Ross, the real estate world is writ large in all its Darwinian glory.

Donald Mahoney