When last we saw barebones productions, in the summer of 2008, it was playing baseball with Richard Greenberg's "Take Me Out."

barebones now returns to bat around the staccato dialogue in David Mamet's intense real-estate drama "Glengarry Glen Ross."

"This is one of the plays that got me into acting in the first place," says barebones artistic director Patrick Jordan, who will play the part of ruthless agent Richard Roma. "It has not been done professionally here to my knowledge in over 15 years and I did not want a generation of Pittsburghers to miss out on it."

Jordan thinks the 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, portraying four desperate and conniving real estate agents trying to meet their quota peddling undesirable properties, is particularly timely considering the dire economic circumstances.

"I think it is more relevant today than when it was written seeing what has happened with the current financial meltdown and the Bernie Madoffs of the world. When it was written, the buzz was the shocking language. Today, I think it will be the shocking content and the fact that 'Glengarry' foreshadowed what has happened to our society since, with corruption having gone to a corporate level."

The barebones production stars the local stage legend Bingo O'Malley, along with Shelly Levine, Michael Fuller, Jason McCune, Mark Thompson, Paul Ford and Benzy. Jordan has a way of getting the hard-to-get O'Malley on stage, as he did with "Take Me Out."

"Bingo is the best actor I have had the privilege to work with," he says, "and he picks his roles very carefully and has a busy schedule with all the film work he does, etc., so timing was an issue for one. But fortunately he loved the play as much as me and after lots of persuasion, conversations and Jameson -- lots and lots of Jameson -- the planets lined up and we got him to sign on."

It opens tonight at The New Hazlett Theater, marking the first time the site-specific barebones has performed in a pre-existing theater. As Jordan sees it, there are three main challenges to doing "Glengarry."

"One, it's an American classic that people know about. Two, they did make an Academy Award winning movie out of it. But three, one of the biggest hurdles is the terse, almost symphonic overlapping dialogue of Mamet's masterpiece that when it works the results can be fantastic."

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