I was so excited to see this play after seeing the movie ten million times, but after learning the only original actor that would be performing in it was Al Pacino, I was a little disappointed. I love Al Pacino, and I was looking forward in seeing him play the part of Tony Roma again, but instead I got something a little different.

There was no all-star cast that was present in the movie. The scene with Alec Baldwin was completely deleted (unless that scene was not part of the original play) and the first scene opens up with Shelly played by Al Pacino and John the office manager (played by David Harbour) sitting in a Chinese restaurant, discussing the decline of Shelly’s sales figures.

“Glengarry Glen Ross,” a  foul-mouthed brilliantly created and insightful look at men in the modern work  place, is drenched in testosterone and verbal trickery.

But lifeless is not the first  word that comes to mind while watching director Daniel Sullivan’s fresh look at two days in the lives of four desperate Chicago  real estate salesmen.

This version of “Glengarry Glen Ross” is a  hoot. The timing is pretty good too: Florida real estate and horrible  desperation in offices is now in vogue.

The big star, of course, is Al Pacino, who plays Shelly “The Machine” Levene, the  once-winning-but-now-struggling salesman.

Here he works hard to be meek  and chummy and desperate and mostly succeeds, though it’s hard not to think  you’re watching Al Pacino working hard to be meek and chummy  and desperate.

His eyes bulge, he plays with  his hair, he takes long pauses while staring to get his point across — he bobs  up and down in the Mamet dialogue, sometimes relishing the theatricality of the  role and other times losing himself in it. That matches the Levene character,  who is down and then up, then down again. Pacino’s eyes blaze triumphantly when  he’s the cat, but later he is piteous as the mouse, begging “listen. Just  one moment.”

The rest of the cast is considered first-rate, although not the original cast from the film: Richard Schiff, who played fidgety Toby Ziegler on “The West Wing,” is hysterical as the clueless George Aaronow;  David Harbour, of “The Coast of Utopia,” is lovely as the crumbling office  manager;  John C. McGinley, the abrasive senior doctor on “Scrubs,” is wonderfully  manipulative as Dave Moss; and Jeremy Shamos, who got a Tony Award nomination for “Clybourne Park,” is  heartbreaking as a weak-willed customer.

It falls to Bobby Cannavale from  “The Motherf—– With the Hat” to become the gravitational force holding the  scenes together and he steps up with a first-rate Richard Roma, a role played by  Pacino in a film version. Cannavale is perfectly cast — a snarling good-looking,  swaggering actor who can also be a goodfella, a nice listener if you’ve got  a problem.

Glengarry Glen Ross is back — just maybe not  the way I wanted.

The only other unexpected surprise besides seeing Al Pacino perform on stage was meeting him in person after the show. He signed our Playbill below and then quickly dashed into the night in his limousine.
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I did not take the following video, but the scene was exactly the same: