Nancy Crane is flipping the script in 'Glengarry Glen Ross'

Nancy Crane joins an all-star cast of women turning David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross on its head.

Summary

• Nancy Crane is starring in an all-female version of Glengarry Glen Ross
• She stars alongside Indira Varma; Rosa Salazar and more
• Patrick Marber directs

Having enjoyed a highly successful career on screen in films like The Dark Knight and on stage in plays including Angels in America, actor Nancy Crane is now deep in rehearsals for Patrick Marber’s revival of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, opening at The Old Vic this month. The tale of a brutal competition between four salesmen, where the two lowest achievers will lose their jobs, is a taut study of toxic masculinity and avarice set in 1983 Chicago. But this is a version with a twist, as it is the first time a major revival of the play has been staged with an all-female cast — with Nancy Crane taking on the role of failing salesperson George Aaronow.

“It was Mamet’s idea,” says Crane of the female cast. “It hugely changes the chemistry, because he explores masculinity and there are no women in the original version.” Despite a cast of female actors, Crane reveals that the pronouns in the script remain unchanged. This is because “the one caveat that Mamet wanted was to have a cast of women, but with nothing changed. So not a word gets changed.”

Perhaps surprisingly, retaining the pronouns has not been a problem. “It’s never come up,” says Crane. “I think the play is so well written. It’s so tight, it’s like a beautifully crafted watch mechanism. It’s just a cleaner line through it, perhaps, with women.” The play explores stepping on others to get ahead — a trait that some would say is inherently masculine. “I’ve always thought that too,” Crane says with a smile. “In some ways, it’s more oblique. I think by keeping the pronouns, you see we’re talking about how men behave, but because it’s a cast of women… something else happens.”

Crane has been contemplating the mentalities of the women in the play. “They have to be street smart,” she explains. “It has to be a certain type of woman who would say those things, and be in that situation. They’re not the most super-feminine women!”

Aaronow is an intriguing character. Without the desperation and hunger of the others, he is almost resigned to his fate and retains a vague sense of morality about the events that unfold. “When I read Aaronow, I was like, ‘yep, I understand that,’” Crane reveals. “He is very resigned but then has a very short fuse.” Where does that anger come from? “Perhaps anger at God,” Crane says after a pause. “I think he has that more cosmic sense of the horribleness, the awfulness of what they are in… George has a more abstract sense of right and wrong within this world where there’s a lot of grey areas.”

Crane often does in-depth research into her roles and is struck by the significance of Mamet basing the play in Chicago. “It’s a very specific place,” she explains. “It’s a city that was built by hustlers, and so you’re either a do-gooder or a hustler, or it used to be the case. I do think that this world in 1983 probably shares more with Chicago in 1883 than it does with now in 2026.”

Director Patrick Marber has just directed the play on Broadway, with the traditional all-male cast. “The temperature in the room is different than if you have a group of men,” Crane explains. “Patrick knows where the laughs are. So that’s helpful. He knows the play backwards and forwards as a result of having done it, but it’s a very different version.”

Crane is working alongside an illustrious cast including Indira Varma, Rosa Salazar, and Niky Wardley; all of whom, she says, get on incredibly well. Almost too well. “Patrick has said you have to get some of the competitive [edge],” Crane laughs. “It’s weirdly harmonious. It’s all really nice, Patrick’s great, and the play’s great, and The Old Vic’s great, and none of the tension from the play has seeped through. It would be horrendous if it was that kind of tension off stage,” she pauses. “Maybe that’s it; we have to have each other’s backs, because it’s gonna get ugly out there.”

Despite the bleaker aspects of the play, Crane is looking forward to embracing the ’80s style of shoulder pads and power dressing, but mostly it’s about the hair. “I want the biggest hair,” she jokes. “Some people are gonna get really huge hair. That’s all I’ll say.”

She believes the play has much to say to today’s audiences. “It’s like your value is about how much money you can generate,” she says thoughtfully. “And if you can’t generate the money, you have no value as a person. I think people still feel that very strongly now.”

Despite the seemingly radical idea for an all-female cast, Crane believes the play’s messages supersede gender. “It’s not about men,” she says gravely. “This is about society. This is about the systems that we live in. It’s not about toxic masculinity. It’s something much deeper, pervasive, and dangerous.”

Book Glengarry Glen Ross tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

This article first appeared in the June 2026 issue of London Theatre Magazine.

Photo credit: Nancy Crane in rehearsals. Inset: with the rest of the cast. (Photos by Manuel Harlan)