Christian Slater stars in Sam Yates’s revival of David Mamet’s play. But what have critics been saying about it? Find out here with Love London Love Culture’s round up of the reviews…
Lies. Greed. Corruption. It’s business as usual.
Set in an office of cut-throat Chicago salesmen. Pitched in a high-stakes competition against each other, four increasingly desperate employees will do anything, legal or otherwise, to sell the most real estate. As time and luck start to run out, the mantra is simple: close the deal and you’ve won a Cadillac; blow the lead and you’re f****d.
The Guardian: **** “How well does David Mamet’s play, 34 years after its world premiere at the National’s Cottesloe, stand up? The short answer is with great vigour.”
Variety: “Sam Yates’ staging is unusually sympathetic. It kicks against the machine rather than the cogs at work within it.”
The Stage: ***While there’s something wearying about seeing yet another West End stage filled with men, their issues and their egos – maybe if we started giving women’s stories the same space and weight we might go some way to remedying this mess – this is a potent and dismayingly timely revival.”
Time Out: **** “it’s a startlingly short, painfully sharp, excavation of the desperation that lies under the alpha male ego.”
Jonathan Baz Reviews: **** “In an evening that is more of an American Nightmare rather than dream, Glengarry Glen Ross is an ugly story, beautifully told.”
Evening Standard: **** “Christian Slater does a fine job of showing how well slick talk can mask lies and viciousness.”
Radio Times: **** “It’s a darkly funny production, which favours farce and a take-down of the characters over really dramatic moments – but it still hits hard.”
The Times: **** “Smooth-talking cast make this an easy sale.”
The Metro: *** “Sam Yates’ Glengarry packs a punch, and is a satisfyingly starry ride through some of Mamet’s best, and most hard-hitting language.”
The Telegraph: *** “What’s missing, at least initially and a touch too glaringly, from Yates’s production is a palpable sense of the clock ticking – a stomach-churning countdown to personal catastrophe.”
London Theatre.co.uk: **** “It’s a play that pulses with linguistic pleasure as the playwright captures the violence and poetry of their language. And while you are sometimes too aware of the acting going on in Sam Yates’s atmospheric production, the cast are clearly relishing it.”
WhatsOnStage: *** “this is a lively but overly polite version of a great American play that pays it respect, without ever illuminating its dark and passionate heart.”
Broadway World: **** “Though kept firmly in period, it’s not hard to find skin-crawling contemporary parallels in Mamet’s exposure of a toxic capitalist culture ruled by the art of the deal.”
Exeunt Magazine: “But something about Glengarry Glen Ross feels too much like a love letter from toxic masculinity to toxic masculinity to be truly incisive in our troubled times.”
The Upcoming: ** “Roma claims near the end of the play that the salesmen are “members of a dying breed”. The thing is, they’re not, and lazy, money-grabbing productions like this will do nothing to change that.”
The Daily Mail: **** “If the play’s first half is a little static, the second is a cracker. Mr Slater is wonderful as silver-tongued, slippery Ricky. Mr Townsend is equally strong as Levene, a man whose last resort is to mention his daughter self-pityingly.”
Theatre Weekly: **** “Glengarry Glen Ross is a timely revival of a legendary play, it is sure to attract a new legion of fans who have been drawn in by the appeal of the movie, and will enjoy the original version just as much, thanks to the beautiful direction of Sam Yates.”
Glengarry Glen Ross will play at the Playhouse Theatre until the 3rd February 2018. To book tickets visit ATG Tickets, Ticketmaster.co.uk, Discount Theatre.com, Last Minute.com, See Tickets.com, Theatre People.com, Theatre Tickets Direct.co.uk, Love Theatre.com and Love London Love Culture.