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There are few artistic depictions of 1980s caveman capitalism than David Mamet’s drama about Chicago real estate agents. Mamet is arguably America’s greatest masculinist playwright of this era, so it’s surprising to learn that the idea to establish an all-female genre came from him.
This new production has the same director last year’s all-male Broadway revivalPatrick Marber. The dress confirms that the female team is playing like men, competing against each other with inconsistent trades and is encouraged to do very inconsistent things in the hope of winning.
Some wear pants suits like Levene (Indira Varma), others look feminine in skirts and high heels, including office manager Williamson (Dorothea Myer-Bennett). It creates a distance between the character and the actors, although there is an intermediate connection, perhaps so that we can see the “action” of masculinity and Mamet’s linguistic punch-ups.
Originally a dark comedy (or comic tragedy?), the show is very funny in this send-up, even if it’s Bugsy Malone at times – an exaggerated, costumed version. Most importantly, darkness is missing. Mamet’s whip-smart patter is present but the high energy and volume are heard continuously and smoothly.
Levene, the lost salesman, is the epitome of an angry, full-throated failure of childhood. Unlike Jack Lemmon, who gave him the sympathetic look of a latter-day Willy Loman in the 1992 filmVarma plays him as a goofball who takes a lot of fun, sipping on what seems like an eternity of coffee. You don’t feel sad about his failure to achieve the American dream in this difficult game because his goal is to make fun of these men.
Office alpha Roma (Rosa Salazar) is a good addition, perhaps because she doesn’t need sympathy as a person. Salazar creates a smooth-wheeled salesman, revitalizes his sales force, and becomes successful in production.
The other two sellers are not clearly defined: gentle, tired Aaronow (Nancy Crane) and chippy Moss (Niky Wardley) in a pencil skirt, heels and a big blonde wig. Williamson, meanwhile, looks like a workhorse – a quiet controller but no real threat.
Production doesn’t match its industry, perhaps for good reason: TV shows like Industry have shown us that women are also capable of aggressive athleticism and brutal brutality. But you wonder why these women are playing to be men instead of acting like Mamet’s capitalist wives, especially in the era of Margaret Thatcher. Didn’t that time show us that women who enter the men’s room can feel pressured to let men in?
Is it really capitalism (crossed with leadership) that turns these characters into venal desires? They are cogs in the capitalist machine and not masters (even Williamson), and they are eventually chewed up by it. But this is not clear here, because the purpose is to increase the sperm.
Gender-changing productions are motivated by a variety of reasons, as outgoing artistic director Matthew Warchus points out in the program. Some are held for harmony between men and women, some are political while others are just misunderstandings, he says. For all its promise, the goal of gender change here seems far from resolved.
