We’d be living in a better world right now if David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize–winning American nightmare, Glengarry Glen Ross, were strictly a period piece, acclaimed for so accurately capturing a climate of toxic masculinity and scam-or-get-scammed capitalism that was unique to its moment in 1984. Instead, director Patrick Marber’s revival comes to Broadway at a time when these social ails have calcified and the art of the deal determines executive orders. Bad for humanity, great for Bill Burr, Kieran Culkin, and Bob Odenkirk, perfectly cast as jaded schemer Dave Moss, hotshot Ricky Roma, and past-his-prime Shelley “the Machine” Levene, respectively, who scrap and scramble to find their footing in the real-estate-sales industry. Culkin’s return to Broadway after a decade coincides with an awards season in which he’s the favorite to win a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for A Real Pain. It’s Burr’s and Odenkirk’s Broadway debut and their first time working together since they briefly shared the screen on Breaking Bad. Only five days into rehearsals and surrounded by artfully cluttered ’80s office furniture, the actors gathered around a fake restaurant booth and bantered in a way Mamet himself could have scripted.
How did you all get involved with this production?
Kieran Culkin: To be honest, I was terrified of doing theater again. I’ve never seen a production of this play or even seen the movie, so when this came, I thought, I’ll just read it. And I went, Oh shit, it’s great. So it was a pretty easy “yes.”
Bill Burr: Somebody who was gonna be in this put in a word for me. I said, “I’ll do it if you get him to do it.”
You told Variety it was Nathan Lane who wanted you for this role.
Burr: It blows my mind. It’s crazy.
Bob Odenkirk: I also asked for you. I wanted you in the L.A. production I was trying to get going two years ago. He wanted you too? That’s great. Everybody wanted you to play this role. Justifiably so.
Burr: I had no idea!
Odenkirk: By the way, do you know Nathan and I are related?
Culkin: What?
Odenkirk: I did that Henry Louis Gates Jr. show, and they said I’m related to Nathan Lane.
Culkin: You ever met him?
Odenkirk: I don’t even know him.
Bill, what’s your relationship to him?
Burr: I’ve never met him.
He’s just a fan?
Burr: I guess so. I’m a fan of his. It’s funny — I got into show business to be a comedian and then I thought, I better start taking acting classes in case I get an opportunity. Still, I never really thought about Broadway. It wasn’t in my wheelhouse. Then I saw True West with Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly around 2000 and thought, Oh wow, this is really cool. I had really started to like acting, but I wasn’t booking anything. It’s funny how life is. A couple years ago, I thought, I’m in my 50s. I guess that’s probably not gonna happen. Boo-hoo, I just tell jokes for a living. And a year later, I swear to God, I get the call.
And Bob, the L.A. production didn’t take off?
Odenkirk: No. And then I came to New York and met with my agents and said, “I want to do Glengarry.” At the time, they had another production set up that they were going to do, and they said, “You can’t do that play. Nathan Lane’s doing it.” I said, “All right, but it’s the one play I would do.” Then a few months later, something changed, and I was called up. I don’t really know much theater. Frankly, I don’t go to it. My wife and my daughter love Broadway, but I struggle with the artifice of plays. But even in the past two days, I’ve learned some things about the way Patrick and Donald Webber Jr., who plays John Williamson, think about acting, and I can see that it’s different from what I know and understand about acting. It’s the same as when I took on Better Call Saul and I was like, What the fuck is this? How do I do this?
Culkin: It’s a different muscle, too. Succession was the polar opposite of what we do here, which is to go over it again and again, and talk about it, and analyze it: “What do you think he means there?” On TV shows, we have 20 minutes to make the scene, and it’s like, “I know we were gonna shoot it outside, but it’s raining. So you’re gonna be in the closet, and this person’s no longer in the scene. Go!”
So you’re saying theater is a totally different beast from any other type of performance?
Culkin: Theater, when it’s great, it’s the best kind of art form to go see. But when it’s bad, I feel like, I spent $28 for this fucking vodka-soda, and now I’m stuck.
Burr: That’s like stand-up.
Culkin: People have asked me, “Are your kids gonna come see it?” Are my 3- and 5-year-old gonna come see Glengarry Glen Ross?
Burr: My 8-year-old says, “I know I can’t come see the play because you say the bad words.” She gets on me for it.
Culkin: My daughter doesn’t really understand that they’re bad words, but she did ask me the other day, “How come you say ‘Fuck it’ a lot?”
Odenkirk: I’m actually shocked at how many fucks there are in this. We’ve been going over pauses, but I also have to go over the fucks! Because there are more fucks than even I say, and I love saying it!
Do you have favorite lines?
Burr: I do for these guys. For Kieran: “Whoever told you you could work with men …” I mean, if somebody says that to you as a guy, it’s game, set, match. And for Bob, it’s this little line: He goes, “Fuck you, that’s what I’m sayin’!” It’s so old school. It’s almost like Dangerfield.
Odenkirk: Since the character’s a Chicago guy and Bill’s from Boston, the play fits his mouth. It’s crazy how you say these words and how they just feel right coming out of you. The way you march around the stage, too, is so Dave Moss.
Burr: I get this guy. There’s a good guy underneath, but he just opens his mouth and ruins it, which I do too. And, also, I think he’s right. It doesn’t have to be that way. It’s funny that this was written that long ago, showing the direction that things were going in — how people just continue to squeeze the people beneath them and how they get satisfaction out of that. A lot of this new robber-baron age is just wildly out of control in every business. Meanwhile, we’re selling shit land. That’s the other thing I like about it: It’s a human thing to act righteous while you’re not righteous.
The show was written 40 years ago, and, if anything, these problems are worse now.
Odenkirk: It’s cool in a way, and sad, how this play is relevant. The core issues, drives, and frustrations of these guys feel like life now in almost every business. It’s the gig economy. You don’t work for a company; you’re just an independent contractor, and you’re fighting against everyone else. We don’t give you health insurance; we don’t give you any protection. It’s really sad overall but a good thing for us that we can do this play and it can mean something.
The play also has a lot of humor in it. And the director has a background in comedy, like some of you. How has that affected your approach to the material?
Culkin: To me, the funny parts are the really devastating things that happen. It’s awful when Levene’s being manhandled and thrown into the room and I stand there and can’t do anything about it and just watch. And I’m not quite sure what’s going on, but I know you’re fucked. It’s funny to me. Those are always the things I tend to laugh at when I see a play. There’s the line about the Nyborgs, a couple Levene thinks he’s made a big sale with — “You see the way they live. How could you delude yourself?” — and you immediately picture their apartment and their clothes and how Levene’s not seeing that.
Burr: That reminds me of the one sale I made in health insurance. I brought it in, and my boss was going, “You sold that guy?” And I go, “Yeah.” And he goes, “Was he disabled?” I said “no.” He goes, “Was he fat?” And I just deflated. The guy was, like, morbidly obese. It didn’t even register! I just went in there, I plugged in his age, and I never did the weight thing. I guess I really didn’t have the heart for sales because I just felt bad walking out after selling somebody insurance. But I will say the salesmen were hilarious. It was like hanging out with comedians. They would tell stories, like those old-school jokes: “Two guys walk into a bar …” Back in the day, those jokes would go around the country through salesmen. They would call each other. I used to work the second shift in a warehouse, and there were a lot of people who couldn’t deal with the world: musicians, addicts, some divorced people. I was working with a guy who was in sales, and I swear every three days he would come in with a killer joke. I’d go, “Where the hell do you hear these jokes?” He’d go, “I’m in sales. It’s all we do.”
Odenkirk: The way the guys go into the salesman aspect of it, when Kieran’s doing the scene where Roma goes, “Monday — how many days are in there?” That’s funny as shit. And every time you say to John Pirruccello, who plays James Lingk, “No, I don’t know,” it’s so great. It’s such a play — such a screaming play.
Culkin: He’s drowning him a bit.
Odenkirk: A cat playing with a little mouse.
Burr: That is the thing about this play: Every time you read it, you find something else, and it isn’t just a little thing. It’s this big tub of amazing stuff that you can delve into.
Odenkirk: It’s about guys, and how they love competing, and how they love giving each other shit and they resent it at the same time.
Burr: Giving shit is an art because you’ve got to feel the love underneath it. That’s always been how I’ve communicated with people, as far as telling them that I liked them: teasing them a little bit, hoping they’re going to do it back to me. These characters are like a bunch of comedians. You’re giving each other shit and then there’s the top comic. A lot of my scene with Kieran is “I don’t really hate you. I’m hurt that you don’t respect me, and I wanted your respect because you’re the top guy, and I actually look up to you and admire you, and I like the way you do business.”
Odenkirk: “You’re mean.”
Burr: That whole thing, “I never fucking liked you” — it’s the exact opposite. When human beings get upset, they say the exact opposite. I wouldn’t be like, “I actually really liked you. So when you say that to me, that really hurts me.” It’s funny, that was written 40 years ago, and men are still not allowed to say that. It’s beyond uncomfortable. Which is why we communicate in the short bursts of insults that we do.
I noticed you have a board in the corner with your real names on it and a point system next to them, like the sales leaderboard in the show. What’s that about?
Odenkirk: That’s Patrick’s little invention. He wants us to compete. The bottom two actors will be replaced by an understudy.
Culkin: Bill and I are the bottom two at the moment.
Odenkirk: It’s all just an effort to get people to interact and have a group vibe.
Culkin: We haven’t had a new point in a couple of days. He offered me a point today, but I didn’t earn it.
Are you finding this to be an effective motivator?
Odenkirk: I don’t need it. I feel like the process is gonna get us there. My challenges feel so internal. It’s the blocking, the consideration that Patrick has to make for people’s sight lines. It’s almost like if you made a movie and you said, “You only get this one lens. You can’t change it. You can’t zoom in.” Everything you did within that one lens would have to be weird and orchestrated.
Culkin: That’s the stuff that I can’t even begin to wrap my brain around understanding, so I have to defer to Patrick.
Bob, it sounds like you’ve been trying to do Glengarry for a while. Why this show? What draws you to Shelley Levene? And in general, what draws you to these types of grasping, desperate characters?
Odenkirk: He gets so many moments to shine and kick ass and put on his show and feel strong about his game. He gets to tell that story about Bruce and Harriett Nyborg, and he’s even excited, and he feels like he made a great sale. And he gets to show the way he’s broken and compromised and a failure. I feel like Shelley was never more than a second man on the board, but he was the second man a lot and for a long time, and maybe he even had a good time doing it for a couple years. I like to imagine he did have a heyday, but he was never No. 1. He was never really built to do it, in a weird way. It’s almost like the guy who’s built to do it is less amazed that he’s doing so well. Ricky’s like, Yeah, I know. That’s what I fuckin’ do. Whereas Shelley is like, Can you fucking believe what I did this year? I can’t believe it!
Culkin: Levene does have all the tools, though. You and I can bullshit.
Odenkirk: Yeah, but he sweats for it. He works for it. Unlike Ricky.
Burr: The show comments on how older people are treated in the business world, the heartlessness of it: “Fuck you. We’re kickin’ you out with nothing.” You’re all used up. You’re toward the end of your career, and you think what you did for these people meant something to them and then you find out that it doesn’t.
Odenkirk: I love playing the vulnerability and the pain of him. My dad was not a salesman, but he had a printing company. He took me and my brother to work two or three times, and we would meet his friends, some of whom were salesmen. They would work until around 11:30 or 12 and then they’d go to lunch, and they would be fucking hammered for the rest of the day, every day. They all ended up divorced, alcoholic, and in a lot of car accidents. But they would just get together to shoot the shit.
Burr: And if they made it to 63, it’s a miracle.
Odenkirk: My dad made it to 56. But all of them — I remember my mom would be like, “Mr. So-and-so just drove off a cliff.” They were fucking losers, and they all thought they were in the Rat Pack.
Burr: Can I tell you something? I bet they were hilarious.
Culkin: I bet they were a good time.
Glengarry Glen Ross is in previews March 10 at the Palace Theatre.