Glengarry Glen Ross
Four real estate salesmen will do anything to close deals and avoid getting fired. Mamet's ear for the rhythm of desperate, profane American speech is on full display. The Pulitzer committee gave it the prize in 1984. The film version added Alec Baldwin's "coffee is for closers" speech, but the play doesn't need it.
The same clipped, ellipsis-heavy dialogue that fans praise as realistic is exactly what turns other readers off, one complaining the cast “slur through their dialogue like they're drunk” and another saying watching “every single character has difficulty forming a complete thought is taxing.” Readers with no interest in middle-aged men talking about money and status say there's nothing else to hold onto, one dismissing the whole premise as “basically the Venn diagram of things about which I do not care.” One frequent complaint calls the profanity excessive to the point of distraction, arguing it substitutes shock for craft, and one reader at least flatly declares it “the final nail in the Mamet coffin.” Recent star-cast Broadway revivals draw criticism too, panned in one review as underwhelming next to the material's reputation.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
