YOU'LL BE SOLD ON `GLENGARRY'.

Byline: Reed Johnson Theater Critic

Quick quiz: What keen social critic once observed that ``the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation''?

Brad Pitt in ``Fight Club''? Susan Faludi in ``Stiffed''?

OK, so it was really Henry David Thoreau in ``Walden.'' But it took David Mamet's 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winning play ``Glengarry Glen Ross'' to give indelible dramatic form to Thoreau's oft-quoted maxim. And it takes an ensemble as adept and well-coordinated as that at Burbank's Third Stage to remind us how brutally funny and devastatingly truthful Mamet's vision of human (read: male) behavior can be.

Both Mamet's dissonant poetry and his Darwinian worldview come through in director Stan Roth's production, which recently was extended through Dec. 19. Whether or not you ultimately buy into these cutthroat, psychologically castrated characters and the 9-to-5 hellhole where they earn their bread, this revival reaffirms the skill of Mamet's construction and the precision of dialogue so finely honed it could slice paper.

Set in the early 1980s, ``Glengarry Glen Ross'' has in some ways begun to show its age. Or maybe it always did. After all, we're meant to see the play's bottom-feeding Chicago real-estate salesmen as colorful anachronisms, old-fashioned hard-working stiffs in a downsized world being run by soulless corporate drones.

Although the Glengarry salesmen use the language of camaraderie as a fig leaf to cover the most nakedly vicious of betrayals, Mamet invests them with a kind of tragic heroism. Spiritual frat brothers of Willy Loman, they win our sympathy even while stabbing each other in the back, because we understand they don't control the ever-shifting rules they must play by.

No cast member does better at internalizing that cruel dilemma than veteran TV and film actor Jay Gerber. In the crucial role of Levene, the washed-up salesman struggling to save his job, Gerber digs deep into the despair of a failed man who hasn't yet forgotten how to fight.

Suggesting a cross between a clumsy gangster and a broken-down vaudevillian, Gerber's performance also gets at the black comedy in Mamet's script. The profane quips crackle like small-arms fire in Roth's crisply staged production, underscored by Roth's ominous plunking-piano sound design.

Oozing smarmy charisma in the play's other crucial role, Sal Viscuso is perhaps a shade too transparent in the beautifully written Act 1 monologue when his character, Roma, is putting the moves on a would-be victim (Kevin Brief). Viscuso plays Roma's come-on as if he's trying to win an argument rather than seduce a sucker. But he's otherwise convincingly sharklike as the office hotshot who's been riding a streak of good luck.

As Williamson, the mercenary office manager, James Henriksen distills sang-froid with a splash of weary resignation. David Wells conveys an amusingly anxious wariness as Aronow, the office doormat. And Jonathan Palmer finds an almost Shakespearean streak of hypocritical righteous indignation as the ruthlessly self-serving Moss.

Boxed into an appropriately cramped-looking set (designed by someone billed as the Amazing Hendo), the production transpires at close range. When the verbal cross-fire gets going, you may want to cover your head. Just be sure to look up in time to clap - loudly and long.

THE FACTS

What: ``Glengarry Glen Ross.''

Where: Third Stage, 2811 W. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank.

When: Through Dec. 19. Performances at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays.

Tickets: $15; $12 students, seniors. Call [phone].

Our rating: Three and one half stars.

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Photo

Photo: Jay Gerber, left, David Wells, D.J. Berg, James Henriksen and Sal Viscuso star in David Mamet's ``Glengarry Glen Ross,'' at the Third Stage in Burbank.