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New Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of it
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
Restaurants
Kitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave
Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
Alex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factor
London,
Nicholas de Jongh's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Anthony Ward.
Cast: Aidan Gillen, Jonathan Pryce, Paul Freeman, Matthew Marsh, Tom Smith, Shane Attwooll, Peter McDonald
Description: A major revival of David Mamet's classic drama, set in an estage agents' sales office in Chicago, where the employees, pitted against each other, will do practically anything to sell the most amount of property. With Jonathan Pryce and Aidan Gillen, directed by Anthony Ward.
Trains: Tube: Piccadilly Circus 
, Tube / Bus: Bus: 38, 19, 14, 22 
Phone: 0870830 0200
Website: www.officiallondontheatre.co.uk
Money-obsessed: Jonathan Pryce as the desperate Shelly Levene with Aiden Gillen and Tom Smith in Glengarry Glen Ross at the Apollo Theatre
Jonathan Pryce plays middle-aged agent Shelly Levene
No play better conveys the spirit of our money-obsessed times than this enthralling, black comedy by David Mamet. Glengarry Glen Ross, in an effective production by James Macdonald that snaps, crackles and pops with lies, threats and criminality, sees a Chicago real estate firm as characteristic of how contemporary American business-life is misconducted. During 80 minutes' playing-time scarcely a single expression of genuine kindness or generosity is heard. The estate agents behave with all the decorum of antagonistic tom-cats, growling, tails a swish, poised to use their claws.
Wordsworth's "still, sad music of humanity" is replaced by the staccato rat-a-tat and answering fire of men noisily competing for the main chance. Few plays are so infested with such expletives or vituperative men who so proudly measure their masculinity according to the size of the deals they broker. No wonder "fairy" becomes their deadliest insult.
Aidan Gillen's riveting Richard Roma, who swindles an innocent husband with heartfelt sincerity by selling him worthless land and wears the nastiest little moustache on the London stage, boasts the charm of a slug clinging to your hand. Glengarry Glen Ross premiered in 1983, but appears more timely today, when both our main political parties bend over backwards to satisfy very big business, than it did in the first, blue, hot flush of Thatcherism.
The opening scenes establish the characteristic mode of wheeler-dealering. Jonathan Pryce's fine, late middle-aged agent, Shelly Levene, who bears the weight of a sick daughter, sits in a Chinese restaurant exuding desperation. He begs and bargains with Peter McDonald's opportunistic office manager, Williamson, to help revive his sinking career by giving him the chance of "leads". These "leads", as the programme neglects to explain, are confidential names and addresses of potential clients to be cajoled into buying up no good properties and pieces of land. He who lands "leads" ends up with a Cadillac.
Shelly, whose flailing agitation echoes Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman, is met with the obstinate, stone-wall of McDonald's young Williamson. The remarkable McDonald, who took over this role just days ago but acts with complete sangfroid, first puts on a terrific show of taciturn indifference, then tries to make money from Shelly's predicament and finally displays the full range of his low-key malice. Comparable displays of oneupmanship follow when Matthew Marsh's repellent agent blackmails Paul Freeman's rather too elderly Aaronow. With bare-faced menace he blackmails Aaronow to break into the agency and steal the lucrative contracts.
Gillen's Roma, in a scene that ought to be played with some homoerotic edge, then raises the black comedy stakes by taking a successful, criminal gamble upon Tom Smith's far too youthful fall-guy, conscious of his lack of masculine fire-power. When designer Anthony Ward dramatically shifts the scene to the estate agent's ransacked office, with the police in situ, Mamet's darkly amusing morality play turns ironic, demonstrating how the immoral end up natural victims of injustice.
•Information 0870 830 0200. Booking to 12 January.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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This was an enjoyable and thought provoking evening of mature and adult theatre and the material the actors have to work with is almost without peer of its type. But...I do believe the cast would have been better had they not affected (in some case quite wobbly) American accents which didn't quite produce the spark and crackle required.
Don't let that stop you seeing it though.
- Villardi, London, England
This play is one of the best for years.
Jonathan Pryce and Aiden Gillian are terrific to put on a master class.
One of them will surely win an award if they can keep to this top form.
- Kim Looi, Uxbridge
