Glengarry Glen Ross

At the Old Vic

I had the opportunity to see Glengarry Glen Ross at The Old Vic. As we took our seats, we were greeted by a set of items dotted across the floor of the round stage. Two trays, topped with gold foil, were used to denote a restaurant, though that only became obvious later. A table rose from the floor as the lights dipped and came to focus on two characters, Indira Varma and Rosa Salazar, dressed in power suits reminiscent of the 1980s. On their feet were high-heeled stilettos. The play was unapologetically cast with all women, and this made their behaviour look even more exaggerated and ridiculous, and yet these were exactly the things we accept without blinking when men do them. Legs spread wide, feet on tables, continual swearing, all at odds with how ladies are supposed to behave but perfectly in keeping with the excess of the real estate world in America.

Throughout, there is the talking over one another, the obfuscation of truth, everyone out for themselves except the unwilling victims who sign on the dotted line. Kudos here to Rosa Salazar as Roma, who in her black suit and her dealings with the only pure victims gives us the slickest and most chilling of the operators. We barely see the whites of her eyes as she hides behind sinister sunglasses.

After the robbery, paper in different pastel colours falls from the ceiling and scatters across the sparse set. A reiteration that not everything is as it seems. Those papers, the retail leads, remain despite attempts to clear them up. You are left with the impression that the in-house robbery will not stop the antics at all.