New York ? Liev Schreiber was a high school kid from lower Manhattan when he walked into the John Golden Theatre 20 years ago to see one of his first Broadway shows: a new play called “Glengarry Glen Ross.” With its crackling dialogue and amoral, slick characters, “Glengarry” was one of the biggest hits of the season and on its way to becoming an American stage classic.

Gordon Clapp, an aspiring actor at the time, also heard the buzz about “Glengarry,” and on the spur of the moment, dropped by the box office on opening night to buy a set of tickets.

Two decades later, “Glengarry Glen Ross” is back on Broadway, and Schreiber and Clapp are starring in the acclaimed David Mamet drama. Schreiber, Clapp and co-star Alan Alda all have been nominated for Tony Awards in the featured-actor category, one of the few times in the history of the awards that a production has pulled off such a triple threat.

Schreiber and Clapp fondly recall the impact the original production of “Glengarry Glen Ross” had on them, especially the dazzling, Tony-winning performance by Joe Mantegna as the smooth-talking, big-shot real estate salesman Ricky Roma. Clapp described it as “the most electrifying experience I ever had in the theater.”

“I was blown away by that play. Blown away,” Schreiber, 37, said recently in his cramped dressing room, a few hours before a performance. “I was personally responsible for the New York chapter of the Joe Mantegna fan club.”

Schreiber plays Roma in the current production at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, Alda is the down-on-his-luck salesman Shelly Levine and Clapp is hotheaded Dave Moss. The play is directed by Joe Mantello, nominated for a Tony for best director in a play. Other cast members include Jeffrey Tambor (“The Larry Sanders Show” and “Arrested Development”), and Tom Wopat (“Annie Get Your Gun” and seven seasons as Luke Duke on “Dukes of Hazzard”).

The production picked up six 2005 Tony nominations in all, including a nod for best revival of a play.

From left, Jeffrey Tambor, Jordan Lage, Tom Wopat, Alan Alda, Frederick Weller, Liev Schreiber and Gordon Clapp star in the Broadway revival of David Mamet's Glengarry

“Glengarry Glen Ross” won Mamet the Pulitzer Prize and catapulted him into the ranks of America’s elite playwrights with his gritty portrayal of the cutthroat world of a Chicago real estate office during the greed-driven 1980s.

In the play, four real estate salesmen are compelled to lie and even steal after they are given an ultimatum by their superiors: The top salesman for the month takes home a Cadillac, and the two worst performers get fired. Their credo is that basic tenet of salesmanship, “ABC, Always Be Closing” – a maxim famously proclaimed by Alec Baldwin during a cameo in the 1992 film version of “Glengarry.”

Like most Mamet plays, “Glengarry” is driven by rhythmic, rapid-fire dialogue filled with incessant profanity – a style that has fascinated actors, playwrights and theater audiences alike for a generation. But the dialogue can be baffling, requiring precision and timing that is necessary to avoid throwing the entire play off kilter.

Clapp, who is making his Broadway debut with “Glengarry,” said he and Tambor spent countless hours on their own time away from the theater rehearsing for a scene involving just two of them in the first act. He said it took a while, but the dialogue finally started to stick.

“The impact of every syllable with Mamet – it’s like a score and you need to hit every note,” Clapp said.