REVIEW: GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS @ THE OLD VIC

🎭 Glengarry Glen Ross

📍 The Old Vic, 103 The Cut, London, SE1 8NB

🗓 Friday 19th June 2026

⭐️ 2 Stars

A BAFFLING, BRASH REVIVAL

Regular readers will know just how much I absolutely adore The Old Vic. It is such an iconic venue, steeped in so much theatrical history. Whenever I step into that beautiful auditorium, I'm always accompanied by this incredible wave of excited anticipation. You just know you’re in a special place. Sadly though, that excitement didn’t last long this time around.

For those who don't know, David Mamet’s GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS is a fast-paced, high-stakes look at a group of desperate real estate salesmen over the course of two days. They are trapped in a dog-eat-dog corporate boiler room, willing to lie, cheat, and steal just to get their hands on the good sales leads and keep their jobs.

This brand-new revival brings a massive twist to the table: an all-female cast. Director Patrick Marber’s goal here was to look at this hyper-masculine, cutthroat environment through a completely different lens. By removing the "Y chromosome" from the equation, the production hopes to explore whether this toxic, ruthless capitalism is strictly a male trait, or a symptom of the brutal systems we live in.

It sounds brilliant on paper, right? But unfortunately for me, in a rare misstep for The Old Vic, this production is plagued with bad choices.

Firstly, let’s talk about the script itself. I will admit that I wasn't familiar with the play before viewing, and I was instantly struck by how dated it felt. To be completely honest, it’s really clunky. It just lacked a cohesive flow, and it felt like a relic of the last century rather than a timeless masterpiece. To make matters worse, the ending lacked any real drama at all. It seemed to come all of a sudden, leaving me sitting there thinking, "Wait, is that the end?"

Look, I’m a huge fan of pushing boundaries in theatre. Gender-swapping characters can work really, really well when done with a clear purpose. Marianne Elliott's 2018 West End production of Company is a testament to how shifting a protagonist's gender can completely re-energise a classic show. And let’s not forget the sensational Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake featuring a male troupe of swans, which is just stunning, transcendent theatre.

Unfortunately, this production didn't achieve that. It came across as more of a marketing gimmick than anything else.

There was such a great opportunity here for this revival to showcase strong, domineering female characters on stage, but it completely misses the point. What has been created instead is some sort of weird group of characters that are stuck in limbo. The actors on stage are obviously women - their clothing and hair are distinctly feminine - yet the character names have not been changed, and everything has this strange, forced masculine energy. They are women, but they are still spitting out Mamet's aggressively male dialogue about their "balls".

This just didn't work for me at all. It made the characters really unbelievable, as if they were just turned into over-the-top caricatures. Ultimately, it completely fails to make any profound point whatsoever.

I'm not necessarily blaming the actors here, but everything seemed so incredibly overacted that I just started to get annoyed. The sheer quality of the talent on that stage is sensational, but the directorial choices here seem to be more "let's just do something because we can" rather than having a clear, justified creative vision. I actually just started to get more and more frustrated as I watched. I genuinely struggled to find a reason why this play had even been revived in the first place, and paired with all the weird choices, I was honestly baffled.

There were, thankfully, some saving graces to stop it from being a total wash. I quite liked the performances of Dorothea Myer-Bennett and Florence Odumosu. I felt they both gave much more grounded, realistic performances amid the chaos. It actually seemed quite strange to me that the most well-known names in the cast gave the performances I disliked the most, leaning way too hard into the shouty, apoplectic caricature of it all.

As for the staging, it worked okay in-the-round. However, this specific setup is much better, in my opinion, when it is done intentionally to enhance the story or create intimacy. Here, it just felt as if it was done for convenience more than anything else.

Sadly, this is one Old Vic production that I won't be rushing back to see. It’s loud, it’s confusing, and it misses a golden opportunity to say something meaningful.

It's safe to say that GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS wasn't for me, but if you want to make up your own mind then performances continue until Saturday 18th July. CLICK HERE to find out more and to book tickets.

Neill Kovacic-Clarke

All views are my own and I pride myself on being honest, fair and free from influence. Theatre is subjective and it is important to remember that all views expressed are just those of one person.

CAST:

Rosa Salazar as Roma; Indira Varma as Levene; Mercedes Bahleda as Lingk; Nancy Crane as Aaronow; Dorothea Myer-Bennett as Williamson; Florence Odumosu as Baylen; Niky Wardley as Moss

RUNNING TIME (approx):

1 hour 25 minutes, with no interval

CONTENT WARNINGS:

Strong language; Racism; Misogyny; Onstage smoking; Sensitive topics discussed; Haze

AGE RECOMMENDATION:

16+

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