Review: GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, The Old Vic

Toxic masculinity is shaping up as the West End's theme of the year. The Almeida’s American Psycho revival satirised yuppie egoism and The Royal Court's Are You Watching? wades through the sewers of internet voyeurism. David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross is the ur-text of all of it. Salesmen fight for survival in a competition where first prize is a Cadillac and the rest get fired. Bravado is as economics and machismo is the method.

Patrick Marber, who direct a separate revival on Broadway this year, directs a new production with a 21st century spin: an all-female cast. Male swagger, stripped of its physical bodies, is amplified rather than diminished through performances that have to adopt masculinity. Every chest-puff, every territorial growl, emerges in its full performative absurdity.

The conceptual rewiring works on paper, but how well does it spark on stage?

Indira Varma's Levene is a washed-out all-timer. We meet her begging for the top leads, each twitch and stutter bleeding the desperation of a has-been. Rose Salazar's Roma, by contrast, slithers through the office with imperious arrogance as the smooth-talking young gun. His seduction of a hapless punter is played with the coiled patience of a panther stalking its prey.

Marber keeps the text taut, cut down to a bare bones ninety minutes. Each line is sharpened to a point and the cast savour each syllable of every venomous barb.

Yet for all its conceptual tricks, the production lacks an electricity that should have been supercharged in Rob Howell’s claustrophobia-inducing in the round staging. The casting reframes the play's masculinity but keeps it on a lead, not giving enough airtime to let the play’s testosterone fuelled heart bleed. We don’t quite feel the metaphorical death of Levene’s salesman, although that might reflect Varma being miscast as a pathetic old timer down on his luck. When Roma’s punter returns demanding a refund, the tone falls flat. The confrontation that should detonate instead fizzles out. We are too busy trying to sus out the commentary on gender dynamics and office politics to savour the play's brutality. It’s like watching a philosophical thought experiment rather than a no bars hold bust up.

The Romas of today are influencers and tech bros flogging digital snake oil, well deserving of a theatrical bashing. Glengarry Glen Ross identifies their spiritual ancestors of decades past, but where TV shows like Succession and Industry go for the jugular, this production draws blood and not much more.

Glengarry Glen Ross plays at the Old Vic until 18 July