Kieran Culkin Was Fêted by Sarah Snook and More of His Succession Costars at the Opening Night of Glengarry Glen Ross
Fresh off his Oscar win for A Real Pain, Kieran Culkin is headlining a buzzy Broadway revival of David Mamet’s enduring classic Glengarry Glen Ross. The Pulitzer Prize–winning play, mounted in New York for the third time in 20 years, celebrated its opening night on Monday with an enthralled and star-studded crowd. Culkin, along with Emmy winner Bob Odenkirk and comedian Bill Burr, commanded the stage at the newly restored Palace Theatre, where the three play cutthroat salesmen pushing worthless real-estate properties while dealing with greed, theft, and a general dearth of morality within their workplace.
Despite heavy rain, strong wind, flashes of thunder, and flooding on the streets of Times Square, many of Culkin’s costars from the TV series Succession gathered to support their former colleague on his special night. Sarah Snook, who starred as Culkin’s sister (Siobhan Roy) on that show, was among the first guests to arrive on the red carpet. “I really admire Kieran’s spontaneity, imagination, and freedom,” said Snook, accompanied by her husband, comedian Dave Lawson. “And he also doesn’t give a fuck. He’s honest and very free. He wears crazy bracelets, which is why I thought I’d wear mine tonight. Mine are from fans of The Picture of Dorian Gray, which I’m doing right now, so I thought I’d pop them on to support Kieran.”
Snook takes on all 26 roles in The Picture of Dorian Gray, which had its own opening night on March 27. Culkin has visited Snook multiple times at her play to show his support, even hanging out the window of an SUV to wave to his Succession costars as they posed for a group photo at Dorian Gray’s opening. “When he came to the stage door the other day and said hi, it was a real oasis of calm in a sea of crazy,” Snook said. “So of course I had to be here tonight. I didn’t text him today, but I wrote him a note on one of the Broadway faxes. On mine, he told me not to fuck it up, so I wrote a joke one as well.”
David Rasche, who played Waystar Royco chief financial officer Karl Muller on the hit HBO series, shared that the one thing he admires the most about Culkin is his side-parted hair and floppy fringe. “His hair—it always seems right,” Rasche joked. “He never has to arrange it.”
As for his acting abilities, “He is immediate and alive all the time. You can always depend on that. Kieran is terrific, and all the acclaim he’s getting [is well deserved]. He’s a great person too.”
Culkin made his Broadway debut in the 2014 production of Kenneth Lonergan’s This Is Our Youth opposite Michael Cera. Lonergan and his wife, J. Smith-Cameron (who portrayed general counsel to Waystar Royco Gerri Kellman on Succession), also attended Glengarry’s opening night. “He’s the most released, freest actor I have ever worked with,” Smith-Cameron said on the red carpet. “He can just be unleashed—it’s the opposite of me, and I really admire it.”
Jesse Eisenberg, who directed and costarred with Culkin in A Real Pain, added to the chorus, telling Vogue that Culkin is “the most unpretentious performer—often to his own detriment” before making his way into the Palace.
Among the other guests who braved the weather to see Culkin, Burr, and Odenkirk perform on Monday night were Cynthia Erivo, Chris Pine, Adam Scott, Bobby Cannavale, Rose Byrne, David Schwimmer, Tony Goldwyn, Molly Ringwald, and Cynthia Nixon. Joined by her wife, Christine Marinoni, the Sex and the City star—no stranger to the Broadway stage herself—was in a reflective mood, waxing poetic about the importance of live theater in these fractious post-pandemic years. “What I really didn’t understand until the pandemic hit was how much I enjoy experiencing the theater together with a whole audience of people all experiencing the same thing,” she said.