Twenty-six years after it premiered at the Cottlesloe Theatre in London, David Mamet's "Glengarry Glen Ross," which caused a sensation in 1983 with its horrific yet realistic depiction of the dog-eat-dog real-estate business in a recession-hit America, could almost be considered a classic. The play went on to reach a wider audience as an Academy Award-winning film in 1992, working from a script also written by Mamet and starring Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino and Alec Baldwin (in a breakout role that did not exist in the stage version).
Our social and cultural context has changed tremendously since the time of the play's setting. The hopeless, aging salesmen characters featured in this Pulitzer Prize-winning play operate mainly from their office, relying on "lead" cards provided by their boss.
Their working style would be completely different if they were portrayed today, with mobile phones allowing — or mandating — them to work from everywhere; instead of being distributed on printed cards, the leads for potential customers would probably come through the Internet.