Closers Only

Bob Odenkirk, Kieran Culkin, and Bill Burr battle for the top of the Glengarry Glen Ross leaderboard.

- Rebecca Alter

Glengarry Glen Ross is in previews March 10 at the Palace Theatre.

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 days into rehearsals and surrounded by artfully cluttered ’80s office furniture, the actors gathered round 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.