Rosa Salazar as Roma
In the all-female production of Glengarry Glen Ross
Old Vic Theatre, London
June 2026
Photo by Manuel Harlan
112 – Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
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David Mamet’s modern American classic, Glengarry Glen Ross, is a blistering commentary on the cut-throat reality of the American dream, and its poisonous impact on those who have bought into the myth and machismo of that dream. The play had its world premiere in the small Cottesloe theatre at the National Theatre in London in September 1983, the production winning the Society of West End Theatre Award and the Olivier award for Best New Play that year. It was first performed in New York the following year, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Drama Critics’ Award for Best American Play. Mamet also wrote the extended screenplay for the 1992 film adaptation of the play, directed by James Foley, which boasted an all-star cast.
David Mamet is the author of a number of acclaimed plays that he wrote in the 1970s and 80s, including American Buffalo, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and Speed the Plow, as well as his provocative 1992 gender power-play, Oleanna, which we covered on the podcast in episode 16 with director Lucy Bailey.
As we recorded this episode an extraordinary new production of the play was playing at the Old Vic theatre in London. While the play has a cast of all-male characters, the actors performing these roles in this production were all female. This is a particularly provocative idea, because one of the primary themes of this play is masculine identity, and the salesmen in this Chicago office do not hold back in their display of machismo. The gender reversal in this production certainly threw into relief the play’s unsettling treatment of masculinity.
To explore Mamet’s unflinching slice of 1980s dog-eat-dog capitalism, I am joined by arts journalist Mark Lawson, who has reviewed theatre for many years for The Guardian and for The Tablet, among others. Mark is also a friend of the podcast, having appeared twice before, in our episode on Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing, and then again in episode 101 when with the critic Michael Billington we debated The 101 Greatest Plays.
113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
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Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia, is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.
As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.
111 – The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht
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Bertolt Brecht’s ‘gangster spectacle’, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, is both an exuberant and funny piece of theatre, and a chillingly topical political satire. Set in the 1930s Chicago of Al Capone, Brecht presents a parody of the rise of Hitler through the character of the gangster Arturo Ui. The play is a universal cry for vigilance against the rise of unscrupulous, populist leaders who threaten democratic societies and global peace.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play by the Royal Shakespeare Company was playing in Stratford-upon-Avon, starring Mark Gatiss as the title character.
I am delighted to be joined by both the show’s translator, playwright Stephen Sharkey, and by Brecht scholar, Professor Tom Kuhn, to guide us through Brecht’s political parody.
110 – Our Town by Thornton Wilder
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Playwright Edward Albee described Thornton Wilder’s Our Town as “the greatest American play ever written.” In fact Wilder’s quintessential portrait of rural America in a bygone time has somehow transcended its iconic American setting to become a universal meditation on mortality, community, and how we live our individual lives, wherever that may be.
The play premiered on Broadway in 1938, winning Wilder the Pulitzer Prize, and it has been a staple of school, amateur and stock performance ever since. In fact, according to critic John Lahr writing in the introduction to the text of the Penguin edition, “the play is performed somewhere in the world every day.”
Howard Sherman, author of Another Day’s Begun – Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in the 21st Century, joins me to explore this American classic.
Michael Sheen as the Stage Manager in Our Town, Welsh National Theatre, photo by Helen Murray.
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