Reimagining Glengarry Glen Ross

By Jonas Wiesner & Jonas Stein

Adaptation:

We chose our contemporary version of Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet to be shown to a specific target group such as young people, preferably students who are either enrolled at high school, college or university and are not interested in luxury goods or as in our case luxury real estate. The sharp contrast is supposed to motivate the young audience to reach for more but at the same time be aware of the tough world of money as it has always been and still is today. The play takes place in Berlin which is also known to be the ideal city for students as the living costs are quite moderate compared to other German cities and the possibilities to get infected by extraordinarily creative events and exhibitions as well as get inspired by various subcultures seem unlimited. However, Berlin does not only cater for young people. In fact, in the past few years Germany’s capital has turned into a magnet that attracts all kinds of people from everywhere, also the wealthy. The venue where the play is performed is the “Deutsches Theater” in Schuhmannstraße 13 in Berlin. Built in 1849/50 with its elegant and luxurious interior it serves tremendously well to underline the content of our version. As the ticket holder enters the theater he or she will face a highly sophisticated stage with two levels. Since the theater serves a remarkably high ceiling the stage can perfectly provide the audience with all the four major scenes that are shown on two different levels, which also gives the audience on the balcony the chance to have a good view. The upper level gives room for the opening scene in which Mr Schwarz (formerly Blake) teaches his employees a lesson in a small office somewhere in Friedrichstraße. The scene contains a couple of simple but modern furniture pieces that resemble an ordinary office of today. The background is filled with a high, long, black shelf containing numerous files and a company sign that says: “Wagner & Wegener Immobilien GmbH”. In front of it the rather small platform is occupied with just two desks and four black moveable chairs. Each desk has two white monitors and keyboards by Apple. On the lower level, right underneath the small office that is presented in the first scene the audience gets to see an elegant restaurant where Pirelli (Roma) and Schubert (Lingk) peruse through the menu. The restaurant that does not have a specific cuisine contains a small bar with four black leather stools and three tables with chic armchairs that are very likely to be compared to any kind of posh restaurant in Friedrichstraße or Berlin Mitte. On the right hand side of the stage, next to the simultaneously appearing restaurant in the first scenes, the audience faces a fancy bar with a low round coffee table made of thick glass and two baroque chairs that are covered with golden silk and black ornaments on. Furthermore, the bar contains little neon decoration to indicate the employees of the office sitting in it while the spotlights are concentrated on another scenery. However, in the first scene all the spotlights are shining on both levels. As the play continues with scene two, showing Peters (Williamson) and Mayer (Levene) in the small office, both levels are first completely in the dark while the upper one is illuminated again. In scene three the audience gets to know Pawlowsky’s (Moss) evil plan, in which he involves the helpless Kruczeck (Aaranow). The forth scene starts off with Pirelli and Schubert getting acquainted and ends with Pirelli offering Schubert a villa in Grunewald while at the same moment the small office is robbed on the upper level, which is again shown at the same time with dimmed spotlights. The second act and very last scene takes place where the play started, namely on the upper level that is now the only part of the stage that is fully illuminated showing the businessmen sitting at their desks arguing and waiting to be questioned by the police officer about the robbery. The police officer is never fully seen on stage but only stands in the door of Peters’ office, which is located “behind” the stage. As in the original Mayer is exposed as the thief in the end.

Analysis:

Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet can majorly be seen as a social critique to a dog- eat-dog society. To transform these aspects from a play written in the 1980’s to a contemporary German audience we had to change quite a number of things.

First of all we concentrated on the scenery. As in the original there are two different places the play takes place. But as we wanted the audience to see what was happening in both places at the same time, even if the other action is happening in dimmed light, we decided to split the stage as mentioned before.

The decision to have an office in Berlin and a lounge bar or restaurant downstairs was simply made because the little company the play focuses on should sell luxury real estate in Berlin, as this is certainly one of the most common places where luxurious mansions are sold. The selling of luxury real-estate compared to regular real-estate, as in the original, developed out of the idea of having a student audience, as well as Berlin being a city where it is not very complicated to sell regular flats or apartments. The business these men are doing needs to be a very tough business, as the whole complexity of the story itself and the entire tension relies on it. It could have been possible to change the company’s business to the life-insurance sector but after all it needed to be an item that is unnecessary to have in the first place for a student audience. In addition to that the “Rio Rancho Company” turned into the classier sounding "Wagner & Wegener Immobilien GmbH" whose head office is in Frankfurt am Main. The leads are not just some names of people that have disposable income but rather the names of different company shareholders or associates that could afford the offered luxury housing but are quite often tough to get through to and furthermore businessmen themselves, hence the complications of closing deals for the “Wagner & Wegener Company”.

David Mamet is an expert when it comes to language and by adding kind of telling- names for the set of characters seemed plausible. In addition to that the altered names needed to fit the different viewership as well as the character's character trades. The two categories of men was expanded from men in their 40’s and 50’s to the young men at the beginning of their career and older men at the close ending of their career. So the office manager Williamson became the 38-year-old Frank Peters with a background as plain as his name. The Italian seeming Ricky Roma became the 32-year-old Luigi Pirelli after the Italian sports-tire producer, whose brilliant marketing strategies like the famous Pirelli calendar are similar to the way Roma/Pirelli lures his customers in. The insecure and fragile James Lingk was transformed to the 35-year-old Sebastian Schubert, a young family-father who, unlike his wife, thinks that having a villa in Grunewald could be nice for his family and a secure investment for his future. This brings us to the group of men in their late stage of their careers. The once very successful Shelley Levene is now called Hans Mayer and 58 years old. He is an honest, straightforward character who has outlived his best times as a salesman and knows it. The old and weary George Aaranow changed to a 55-year-old Dimitri Kruczeck and the big-mouthed Dave Moss turned into the 47-year-old Sascha Pawlowsky. Both men share a strong bond due to their eastern-European heritage and are closer than everyone else in the office. As we wanted to have the ABC-speech by Blake in the play, we included the 48-year-old Mr Schwarz who was sent by the always mentioned but never seen Wagner and Wegener to inspire their Berlin salesmen. His BMW changes to an Audi R8, which in relation is similarly expensive for a German as a BMW is for an American. The American Cadillac turns into a German Porsche for reasons of further authenticity.

The play opens with the speech by Mr Schwarz, which sets the atmosphere of the whole play and the thunder and rain sound effects "outside" emphasise this gloomy and tense feeling the audience gets as it is done in the 1992 movie. During this speech Pirelli sits downstairs at a table of the restaurant with his back to Schubert and peruses through the menu, even though he knows it, to appear unsuspicious to Schubert. The scene with Mayer and Peters does not take place in the restaurant but in the office after Schwarz's speech, to connect the scenes more fluently. The scene with Pawlowsky and Kruczeck is taking place in the bar downstairs and to make the performance more dynamic the actors are already sitting at the bar as Mayer and Peters are talking. The following scene including Pirelli and Schubert ends with the audience seeing the office being robbed by a dark figure. Even though this is happening in the background of the stage, it is still in the centre of the audience's attention as it happens right above Pirelli's and Schubert's heads. The play goes on as in the original with the stereotypical overweight unfriendly police officer questioning the company's employees about the robbery. At the end of the play Mayer slumps onto his chair and buries his face in his hands as he was exposed as the thief.