By Harry Haun
02 May 2005

The cast comes out of the chute a good 90 mph, two by two, in a rapid-fire succession of three short scenes, set in a dimly lit Chinese restaurant, that constitute Act I. Mostly, these scenes are monologues, rising and falling like emotional arias, while the person being played to listens aggressively and makes the appropriate yea-or-nay cursory responses.

In order of their appearances/nonappearances are Shelly Levene (Alan Alda), a defanged old tiger clawing his way back in the running by making a hard-bargain with the office manager, John Williamson (Frederick Weller), for some hot leads; David Moss (Gordon Clapp of "NYPD Blue," the Broadway debutante of the cast behaving like a well-seasoned veteran), conning the office ineffectual, George Aaronow (Jeffrey Tambor), into stealing those leads; and, last but definitely not least, Richard Roma (Liev Schreiber), the ferocious top-dog on the selling chart smooth-talking a fresh victim, James Lingk (played almost catatonically by a grayed, bespectacled, completely unrecognizable Tom Wopat). Act II is chaotically interactive as the seventh member of the team, Jordan Lage, an inspector, is called in to investigate an office robbery.

The original Broadway cast had no one who was a star at the time—Robert Prosky, Mike Nussbaum, James Tolkan, the late J.T. Walsh, Lane Smith, Jack Wallace and Joe Mantegna—so the two who were nominated (Prosky and Mantegna) arm-wrestled in the Featured Actor category, with Mantegna emerging the victor with a dazzling flash-and-dash display. Much of that goes with the character of Richie Roma, which was the part of preference in an informal poll taken of the opening night audience. Christian Slater, Jeff Goldblum and Steve Martin didn't hesitate a beat. Bob Saget said he'd be ready for Shelly Levine in another 20 or 30 years. Matthew Broderick thought he needed more seasoning before he could decide on any role. (And he's getting plenty of seasoning these days on the film of The Producers: "We finish the film in three weeks. Can't wait. Can't wait. I just did `I Want To Be a Producer,' about 65 times a day for three days. I got beat up, but I had a lot of fun." David Marshall Grant said he'd "like to play a member of the audience, again."

The grounded and WASP-ish Patrick Wilson harbored no Roma illusions, opting realistically for the Williamson role, roughly the real-estate world's equivalent to the barely-wet-behind-the-ears Second Lieu-ie role in old war movies. But the work he admired most was Alda's. "Just awesome," he said. "Every time you watch Alan Alda work, you always care about his characters whatever he's doing, from The Aviator to whatever. And that's kinda all you want, I think, as an actor. He always has such heart."

Alda confessed that the character he's playing rarely comes first with him: "I always think about the play first, and this is a great play, one of the great American plays and one of the great world plays. To have a chance to work in this play, to do this language, is so great. It's thrilling to do, but it's also very difficult, which is one of the things that makes it fun because, if you can solve this, you wind up feeling pretty good about yourself."

Finite timing is mandatory for Mamet, he said. "I don't think anybody finds it easy to get into the rhythm of Mamet. [W. H.] Bill Macy, who has done a lot of Mamet, said, `Every actor who tries to simply learn the words in a Mamet play eventually wants to commit suicide.' It's not easy, and learning the words is always the easiest part of a play, but this is very, very difficult. There are many repetitions. You have to figure out why the repetitions occur, why the pauses occur. Once you understand that—once you do it and once the whole company is doing it and doing it accurately—you come across meanings that you couldn't have gotten any other way. You never understand what the play is really all about until everybody is doing it right."

The elusive Mamet, who attended the opening with his actress-wife Rebecca Pidgeon and declared the revival `a spectacular production,' writes in the rhythm of life like—much like—the song by that name from Sweet Charity, which will officially close the season on May 4. Glengarry Glen Ross provided its last dramatic jolt, but director Mantello admitted that this was musically arrived at: "We worked on it just like we work on any play, but, in addition to that, we worked on it like it was a piece of music," he said. "I think that Mamet gives you so many clues. More than clues, it's like a musical score, and, if you adhere to what he says, you're home safe."

Is it any wonder, then, that Mark Schoenfeld, composer of Brooklyn: The Musical at the Plymouth next door, was drawn into the opening-night commotion. "It's music, actually," he decreed. "Rhythm is part of its power. You walk away, and you still hear the rhythm." Recording executive Bill Rosenfield heard it, too. "It's an album," he agreed giddily. "I'm sure it's an album! You'll be seeing 50,000 of them tomorrow! It's already pressed!"