Glengarry Glen Ross

Gate Theatre, Dublin Until Jul 14 €15-€25 01-8744045 gate-theatre.ie

The American writer David Mamet has received many complaints through his long career, but none more revealing than his daughter’s admonishment for his liberal use of bad language. “That language put that fuckin’ Fudgsicle in your mouth,” he replied.

Well, sort of. Mamet is better defined by an attentive ear than a foul mouth. This 1984 drama of business machismo and mounting desperation (here directed by Tony Award-winner Doug Hughes for the Gate) came from his direct experience working in a Chicago real estate office.

Glengarry Glen Ross gives a photorealism to the moral contortions, brittle human relationships and heroic swearing among the lower rungs of the capitalist ladder, but it’s as thorough a dissection of the American marketplace as Death of a Salesman.

Such tales have a particular resonance in these times, although the testosterone- addled milieu can leave it unbalanced (there have been several all-female versions). Still, you revel in the poetry of its profanity, such as the charismatic Ricky Roma (played by Reg Rogers, left), whose philosophy is bundled in with his sales pitch: “There’s an absolute morality? Maybe. And then what? Bad people go to hell? I don’t think so. If you think that, act that way. A hell exists on earth? Yes. I won’t live in it. That’s me.”

I’m sold.

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