Here are the leads, you schmucks. Names and numbers of deadbeats and crazies who might, just might, buy that piece of Florida swampland you're peddling. "Put a closer on the job," you say? "Always Be Closing," you say? Bull. The way you get through this, you dickhead, you fuckin loser, is to act each day without fear.
It's fear that motivates the polished cast of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross at Seattle Rep, which premiered last night, fear of losing their jobs, fear of losing what self-respect they've got left. They berate one another without mercy, fuckin losers every one, drowning men trying to survive by holding their partners under water. First prize in the monthly sales contest: a Cadillac. Second prize: steak knives. Third prize: you're fired.
If Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman was the classic American tragedy about a man with nothing to sell but a smile and a shoeshine (and about the honor of an honest day's effort), Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross updates the futility of the American dream (and the delusion that there's any good at all in mankind).
At the Bagley Wright, the actors (especially John Aylward as Shelly Levine, R. Hamilton Wright as Ricky Roma, Charles Leggett as Dave Moss) fuss, bluster and kick their way through Mamet's dark night of dread. If you've seen the movie, it's Alec Baldwin's character, Blake, who gets the memorable lines (not to mention the endless parodies, including this SNL skit). But Blake wasn't even in the original, Pulitzer-winning stage version; Mamet added him in the screenplay to give menace and doom an explicit, onscreen voice. Without Blake, the unseen menace of fear and failure is all the greater.
Seattle Repertory Theater presents Glengarry Glen Ross, through Feb. 28th. Tickets: 206-443-2222 or online 
R. Hamilton Wright (r) and John Aylward. Photo by Chris Bennion.
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