I really liked Charles Isherwood's story in the Times about the producers of Glengarry Glen Ross and their cynical decision to hold the show's opening, so I wrote a thing about it.
Times theater critic Charles Isherwood caused a stir this week with an essay about the craven behavior of the producers of Glengarry Glen Ross, who used Hurricane Sandy as an excuse to postpone the official opening of their show by a month. While some imaginative conspiracy theorists have fantasized that this was simply a ploy to give marquee star Al Pacino a bit more time to learn his lines, Isherwood paints a more cynical picture, of producers selling high-priced tickets to something that is a preview-in-name-only, allowing them to rake in around $1 million weekly without having to face potential critical wrath.
When news came this week that Mamet’s other show on Broadway is closing—something his plays have done a lot of lately—hiding from critics suddenly seemed like a bright idea. Reviewers hated The Anarchist—a turgid think-piece about, sigh, the nature of evil and truth and stuff—and so The Anarchist died. But Glengarry might be a special case: a serious play that doesn’t need to be reviewed, because the critics can’t affect it at all.
Read it! Read it, you fools!