Verdant Productions present this revival with the genders of the characters switched: here we have two female fatcats, a male mouse and a tussle over which particular script gets greenlit.

Jolly Abraham, totally at home with the quickfire Mamet idiom, makes an excellent fist of Charlie Fox, the suppliant producer. Macleod Stephen is subtly sly as Kevin, the “naïve” temporary assistant who tries to upend the power dynamics by using the only currency he possesses, his youth and sexual attractiveness. But Tara Egan Langley has the difficult challenge of capturing the alpha-executive Bobby Gould. She plays it for sincerity and realism, and if it doesn’t quite come off, it’s an impossible task. In 2023, it’s easily believable that women would be in power in a corporate setting such as this; it’s easily believable a female executive might seduce a younger male colleague; but Egan Langley doesn’t capture the ludicrous vanity, essential to this sort of executive (male) behaviour, and the outcome doesn’t convince.

A simple setting provides a plain background for Louise Dunne’s fetching 1980s-style costumes. Andy Crook directs but it’s hard to see what solutions he finds to the essential problems posed by the gender switch. The fisticuffs in the final scene have a credibility problem.

Mamet’s dialogue is superb, and while his gender representations are dated, his analysis of power dynamics is too valuable to discount. This is a valiant attempt to repackage the writer for a post-MeToo age. Good revivals must speak to the contemporary moment, and this one certainly does, but the production remains more an interesting gender-experiment than a great show.