Saturday, 9 February 2008 (in previews).
David Mamet's plays hardly seem a natural fit for the London stage. His characters speak the language of American capitalism -- everything terse and tense, full of acidic sentences spat and interrupted and punctuated with profanity. But what's important to consider when evaluating the place of Mamet on this side of the pond is that maybe his plays don't merely encompass the jargon of American capitalism after all, but rather the universality of greed.
It is ex-pat American film actor and controversial artistic director of the Old Vic Kevin Spacey who has wisely revived Mamet's quick-witted and sharply observant Speed-the-Plow, taking on the role of Charlie Fox opposite fellow American Jeff Goldblum and allowing London audiences a fresh chance to evaluate this hypothesis for themselves.
It was Harold Pinter who originally championed Mamet's work to the National Theatre, where Speed-the-Plow had its London debut in 1989. Indeed Mamet seems to have much in common with Pinter's pared-down style. Speed-the-Plow is representative of drama at its most distilled: three characters, minimal scenery, and overlapping dialogue that cuts like a knife and is perfectly fitting for the wheeling-dealing nature of the film industry. Dripping with 1980s greed, it's a play that investigates the Hollywood studio system past its prime and its obsession with the proverbial bottom line. Bobby Gould, played by Jeff Goldblum, has recently become an upper-level studio exec, when colleague Charlie Fox, played by Spacey, brings him the opportunity of a lifetime -- a major film star willing to cross over from another studio to make a high-profile prison pic.
And it's when Spacey and Goldblum go head-to-head that the play feels most alive. These are two men who've known each other for years, Fox always a few steps behind Gould. All nervous energy, Spacey conveys the raw ambition of his character expertly. As his sits on the office couch, rubbing his hands, tongue waggling, the tension is palpable. And he's matched by lanky Jeff Goldblum, whose manic pacing practically transcends to dance as he puts a face to the images of weaselly studio execs of American film lore.
Where the plot thickens, and also where the production loses its steam, is with the entry of Gould's temporary secretary Karen, played by Laura Michelle Kelly. Karen, on a visit to Gould's house that's part of an office scheme, props up a novel about radiation and the apocalypse by an "Eastern sissy writer" recently submitted to Bobby for what he dubs a "courtesy read." This subsequently causes Gould a mental shake-up as he reexamines his age-old set of methods. It's up to Karen to spawn this shift. She must simultaneously emit the naivety of a fresh-faced secretary and the calculation of a woman with greater ambitions. Kelly manages to fulfill the former but is sorely lacking in the latter category. More hapless victim than vixen, Kelly's apathetic delivery of her portion of Mamet's script causes the play to sag in its middle section.
But things pick up again when Gould and Fox are up to their old tricks in the third and final scene and Karen is once again relegated to a supporting role, making it all the more obvious that male characters are Mamet's forte. Spacey and Goldblum seem to have Mamet in their blood, and their performances are unmissable. It's because of them that this production is undoubtedly deserving of attention. At a slight ninety minutes, any pacing problems therein are minor ones. Still, one wishes casting director Jim Carnahan, a consistent practitioner of celebrity casting, could have found someone with a bit more bite for the role of Karen.
Fast-paced direction from Matthew Warchus keeps the dialogue moving at a breakneck speed nonetheless, and bell-shaped office and bedroom sets from Rob Howell obliquely mimic the shape of the Old Vic auditorium, as if holding a mirror up to the audience.
And that's exactly what this production does, allow us to see in ourselves the greed that, Mamet projects, is thrusting us collectively closer and closer to the apocalypse, whether it be literal or metaphorical. The title Speed-the-Plow, many may be wondering, comes from a traditional English song extolling the virtues of industry. "Industry produces wealth, God speed the plow" is the full original phrasing, a fittingly cross-cultural source material for a play that speaks to Britons and Americans alike. After all, Spacey and Goldblum have brought a bit of Hollywood to London with crackling lead performances, and, as one of Mamet's forerunners wrote in another capitalistic masterpiece, "attention must be paid."
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