Lyn Gardner's Weekly Picks
Published on 1 June 2026
Everyone thinks they know Glengarry Glen Ross (Old Vic), David Mamet’s famous play about four real estate salesmen competing to achieve the most sales and win a Cadillac. Whoever comes second will get a set of steak knives, but the pair who come last will lose their jobs. The twist in this revival—directed by Patrick Marber—is that the gender of those making the sales is flipped: they will all be played by women. It’s an intriguing idea, particularly with the all-female cast led by Indira Varma and Rosa Salazar. The test will be whether Mamet’s play—often read as a study of competitive masculinity and male one-upmanship in which everyone, including women, is ripe for exploitation—remains a compelling indictment of frontier attitudes and the American Dream. Mind you, in the era of Selling Sunset, we all know that women can be every bit as ruthless as men.
This week the RSC pitches up at the Kiln with Driftwood, a new play by Martina Laird, best known to date as an actor. But that might be about to change. The runner-up in the Verity Bargate Award and subsequently picked by the RSC, Driftwood is set in Trinidad in 1956 in a gentleman’s club where everyone is vying to make a future for themselves. But with political change in the air, the chains of history and colonialism are hard to break, and playing to win has consequences.
The RSC are, of course, the originators of My Neighbor Totoro, which recently announced its final extension and will be finishing its run at the Gillian Lynne Theatre at the end of January 2027. You will kick yourself if you miss this, because Phelim McDermott’s staging, based on the much-loved Studio Ghibli movie, really is something incredibly special as it tells of two sisters who move from Tokyo to rural Japan and discover a benevolent forest spirit in the woods. It has got real heart, theatrical invention, and mouth-gaping puppetry. A genuine treat for all the family.
McDermott, a genuinely maverick talent whose work always surprises, is a busy man who has had a long collaboration with the US experimental composer Philip Glass. In July @sohoplace London gets to see his 2019 Manchester International Festival production Tao of Glass, which has since been seen around the world. McDermott brings all the theatrical flair you’d expect to an evening that defies being easily boxed away, as it takes the form of both concert and theatre and brings together musicians and puppeteers to present a story and mediation on life and death inspired by Taoist wisdom.
By Lyn Gardner
Lyn Gardner is an acclaimed theatre journalist and former critic with decades of experience covering British theatre, from off-West End and fringe theatre to major West End productions.