Glengarry Glen Ross: All female staging feels compellingly new and strange

Dorothea Myer-Bennett (Williamson) and Rosa Salazar (Roma) in Glengarry Glen Ross at The Old Vic (2026) - (Manuel Harlan)

We’ve got used to gender-swapped or gender-blind casting as an illuminating or refreshing technique in London theatre, or simply as a redress of patriarchal norms, especially in classics. But Patrick Marber’s all-female staging of David Mamet’s hyper-masculine 1984 study of desperate real-estate salesmen somehow feels compellingly new and strange.

Indira Varma and Rosa Salazar lead a cast of women who dress and sound like women, playing characters who are entirely and narrowly male, their body language tacking between the genders. As alpha Ricky Roma, Salazar has a forceful, shoulders-forward stance, but also habitually whips her ponytail through her circled fingers.