Beware of Richard Roma: The Charismatic Salesman
Richard Roma is a figure to watch out for, a top-tier operator among the bottom feeders at a shady real estate agency in Chicago. With a hypnotic charm and a dizzying pitch, he possesses an uncanny ability to identify your vulnerabilities with forensic precision. He knows just how to poke at them with a blunt needle, making you question your very identity. For instance, when he asks a potential client, “You think you’re queer? I’m going to tell you something: We’re all queer,” he turns the tables, offering a twisted sense of kinship and understanding.
Roma’s aim is to make you believe that he is that one brother who dreams big for you, who sees beyond your mundane habits of caution to the tantalizing rewards that only taking risks can bring. But, in reality, there are no rewards to be found. The lots he’s peddling in Florida, in developments laughably named Glengarry Highlands and Glen Ross Farms, are utterly worthless.
In the office, Roma stands out as the alpha among a group of losers. He dominates the leaderboard of recent sales, sitting perilously close to the coveted $100,000 mark that will earn him a shiny Cadillac in the agency’s sales competition. Meanwhile, the two lowest earners are doomed to be fired. His colleagues, desperate and scheming, are just additional marks for him to exploit; their plans are amateurish compared to his seasoned manipulations.
No wonder Richard Roma remains, over four decades after his debut on Broadway in David Mamet’s iconic play, “Glengarry Glen Ross,” one of the theater’s most compelling characters. He embodies the unregulated id of sociopathic capitalism, making Willy Loman seem like a sentimental softy. The audacity of this salesman suggests he will never fade away.
Or so I believed. However, in the oddly subdued revival that premiered on Monday at the Palace Theater, a different portrayal emerges. Kieran Culkin, taking on the role of Roma, leads a sales team that includes notable actors such as Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr, and Michael McKean. This time, Roma is not the master of everyone else’s neuroses; instead, he appears to be grappling with his own. In a pivotal scene that concludes the first act, as he prepares to deliver a pitch aimed at the very soul of a hapless individual, his deeply peculiar and introspective nature shines through, causing any semblance of his once confident facade to crumble. The man now seems incapable of selling even a dollar for a dime.
In this revival, Bill Burr portrays the hotheaded Moss, while Michael McKean takes on the role of the straight-laced Aaronow in a compelling Act I scene set in a Chinese restaurant.
