Ex Offers Slow Speed the Plow

Speed the Plow

by David Mamet

directed by Chris Scully

October 21, 22, 23

David Mamet's plays celebrate the wide-open spaces in the American brain. True to form, Speed the Plow wallows in motor-mouths eager to demonstrate their witlessness. If you mosey on up to the Loeb Ex this weekend to see the play, you're bound to get your fill of unspeakable people indulging their character flaws. But this entertaining production is mared by the actors themselves indulging some of the classic character flaws of their profession.

Speed the Plow depicts a day in the life of a Hollywood studio. The recently promoted and gut-wringingly smug Bobby Gould selects the scripts which the studio makes into movies. Ambitious and unthinking, he is on the verge of green-lighting yet another crass but lucrative crowd-puller. But he is thrown into a quandary by his insinuating temp's efforts to promote a pretentious novel about radioactivity. Much soul-searching ensues as Charlie Fox, a subordinate, and Karen, the secretary, wrestle for control of Gould's mind and agenda.

Like all Mamet plays, Speed the Plow is all talk and no action. Pompous airheads loaf around the stage, vomiting a constant stream of meaningless platitudes, feigned emotions and boasting bombast. With sinister skill, Mamet makes good intentions look laughable, self-analysis futile and reform impossible.

All this may not sound like a light-hearted romp through Tinseltown, but Mamet's genius lies in rendering the darkest and most depressing conclusions hilariously entertaining. His dialogue is quick, realistic, lively and witty. The words of the actors take on a life of their own, piling cliche on cliche, spinning a web of rhetoric, mocking communication.

A script like this should be a push-over for any cast. Just spit it out and you can't go wrong. But this cast seems unable to do just that. They're slow on their cues and in their delivery. Attempting to read meaning into lines that don't have any is a trying exercise for cast and audience alike. Mamet's quips must rattle out like an artillery barrage, not like languid dinnertime conversation.

Mamet writes his characters larger than life. Unless an actor flings himself into his role whole-heartedly, the portrayal becomes self-conscious. Aaron Zelman succumbs to this danger in his portrayal of Gould. As the play progresses, he adapts his style admirably to the ups and downs of his character's troubled psyche, playing the sobered, morning-after Gould with dull compassion. But, especially in Gould's brasher incarnations, Zelman never seems quite convinced that he can carry off such an outrageous script. He knows that we know that he's acting.

Jeremy Blumenthal, on the other hand, endows the craven, envy-gnawed Charlie Fox with a peculiar loathesomeness. He makes the transition from bitter but unabated brown-nosing to livid insubordination flawlessly. His cloying gestures and demeanor would constitute hamming in any other show, but fit the Mamet bill perfectly.

Danielle Kwatinetz, as Karen, confronts a much more complex role. She manages to sustain unruffled simplicity and grace even after several unsavory revelations strip her of her soft-spoken naivete. Her naturalistic acting admirably reflects Karen's more thoughtful character.

The script demands minimal direction, and Chris Scully obeys. He supplies a first-rate set, flamboyantly plastering the floor and walls with old movie posters, while dispensing with all excess furniture. The end product proves visually engaging without distracting the viewer.

But Scully fails to marshall his actors. His blocking occasionally degenerates to untutored ambling. More seriously, so does the acting, because Scully allows his cast to dawdle.

Although frequently entertaining, Speed the Plow falters under the cast's excessive introspection. How ironic that a play which pans Hollywood should suffer from self-indulgent actors lingering over their lines.