Glengarry, Glen Ross: Lie. Cheat. Steal.

In David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross at the Dallas Theater Center, the audience got to enter a world of backstabbing, lying, and competitiveness as a group of salesmen try to claw their way to the top. The only character that merits any sympathy is Lingk, a customer who is almost hoodwinked out of his money by Roma, the Gordon Gecko of the office. There are elements of the characters of this play that make the viewer's skin crawl, not to mention gain the realization that sales is not an industry one wants to enter, or at the very least enter blindly...What was really interesting to hear was David Sauer's explanation after the play of where the title probably came from: the swamplands in Florida that are named after Scottish Highlands. So, this sales group in Chicago is selling swampland and using every trick up their sleeve to get the customer's check. Ultimately, they are doing something morally atrocious: selling land of virtually no value to people, and showing brochures to people that we can imagine are probably glossy and filled with photos of beauty. These characters fight over the leads, the fight over the phantom Cadillac, and ultimately, they are fighting over who can screw over the most people, the most thoroughly. We don't see any warmth or depth in any of the characters really, except when Levene starts to mention a daughter, but we never get to hear anything more about her. Mamet isn't trying to sugar-coat. In a play that seems like a hyperbole of the sales scene, it was almost disheartening to hear a fellow audience member mention in the Q&A after the play that the sales world is, in fact, like the one portrayed in Mamet's play. He mentioned how people will fight over leads, and how some people lie to get their way. In an industry that is commission based, people will do whatever it takes to get paid. The ethical problems with this logic are infinite. This is not fair, this is not just, it is not Honest, it is not humane, one could go on and on....In this play, for a couple of hours, we enter a world where we see the ugliest aspects of human nature, and the business that requires it.