NYT: Speed-the-Plow: Do You Speak Hollywood?
October 24, 2008
THEATER REVIEW | 'SPEED-THE-PLOW'
Do You Speak Hollywood?
By BEN BRANTLEY
The Barrymore Theater should provide seat belts for as long as Neil Pepe’s revival of David Mamet’s “Speed-the-Plow” is in residence. The production that opened Thursday night - starring the ace team of Jeremy Piven, Raúl Esparza and Elisabeth Moss - pursues its corkscrew course at such velocity that your instinct is to check yourself for whiplash.
When the curtain falls on this short and unsparing study of sharks in the shallows of the movie industry, it’s as if you had stepped off a world-class roller coaster. The ride was over before you knew it, but you’re too dizzy and exhilarated to think you didn’t get your money’s worth.
Is cynicism supposed to be this energizing?
“Speed-the-Plow” has no business feeling so fresh. There was novelty in Mr. Mamet’s acid-etched portrait of greedy, foulmouthed Hollywood players when it opened in 1988. But since then the dirty business of film production has become the stuff of daily business pages, nightly telecasts, snarky Web sites and a slew of self-flagellating movies about movies, from “The Player” (1992) to the current “What Just Happened.” Yet this production is, for me at least, even more vital than the original, which starred an excellent Ron Silver and Joe Mantegna and a shockingly unmemorable Madonna. And the reasons have very little to do with film and everything to do with theater. What makes “Speed-the-Plow” so exciting is its power to define and destroy an entire self-contained world through the tools and weapons of spoken words, expertly wielded by a very live cast.
Boil this 85-minute work down to the sort of single selling sentence that is the lingua franca of its moviemaking characters, and it isn’t much: Two foulmouthed Hollywood executives are all set to pitch a can’t-lose deal to the big boss when an unexpected obstacle blocks their way. This obstacle never pushes its characters out of their insular natural habitat. There’s nothing as extreme as a murder (as in “The Player”) or political crisis (à la “Wag the Dog,” the Hollywood-meets-Washington spoof on which Mr. Mamet worked as a screenwriter).
What there is is talk. And as in his earlier “American Buffalo” (to be revived on Broadway later this season) and “Glengarry Glen Ross,” talk is rich, even when it sounds cheap: a mighty means of measuring and asserting power, of confirming one’s place in the scheme of things.
The slangy, zingy patter of exaggerated insult and tribute swapped by the studio executives Bobby Gould (Mr. Piven) and Charlie Fox (Mr. Esparza) isn’t just air filler; it’s the existential warp and woof of their lives. (Scott Pask’s tasteful, sterile sets for Bobby’s office and house are blank slates; words are what furnish these rooms.) “Speed-the-Plow” is about what happens when the shiny bubble produced by this talk is punctured by someone who doesn’t speak the language.
Bobby is the new head of production at a movie studio; Charlie is his longtime (and lower-tier) associate, who shows up with the deal of a lifetime: the chance to make a prison-themed buddy picture with the box-office king Douggie Brown. Bobby happens to have on his desk an apocalyptic, literary novel by “an Eastern sissy writer,” the antithesis of the kind of movies these men stand for.
The obscenities, sentence shards and machine-gun cadences common to Mr. Mamet’s dialogue are in evidence as Bobby and Charlie celebrate the commercial project and dis the arty one. But unlike the two-bit con men and salesmen of “Buffalo” and “Glengarry,” these small-minded Hollywood big shots, who happily describe themselves as whores, have been endowed with a sense of irony, of self-consciousness.
Both satirical and sentimental about who and what they are, they turn conversation into a ritualistic art. Under Mr. Pepe’s juggernaut direction, Mr. Piven and Mr. Esparza invest that art with the souped-up, self-inflating rhythms of cokeheads (which seemed to be the condition of everyone in Hollywood in the 1980s, even non-users).
Listening to their rapid-fire exchanges is like watching top-seeded tennis opponents locked in an endless rally. And when Karen (Ms. Moss), a temp agency secretary working for Bobby that day, enters the room, you feel the deflation that comes when such volleys end. In speech Karen is a plodder, earnest and dogged. This means that in Bobby’s world she’s exotic, and he starts to listen to her as if she were a siren singing.
Mr. Mamet has provided very little back story for these three characters outside of their professional relationships. Yet as embodied by Mr. Piven, Mr. Esparza and Ms. Moss, they’re not just moral archetypes or linguistic athletes. We know where they’re coming from. Or we do by the end of the show, when we realize just how carefully these performers have set us up for the final payoff.
Mr. Piven has the pivotal role, and he executes it with uncanny grace and intelligence. A three-time Emmy winner as the amoral über-agent on “Entourage,” he would be a natural for the hungry-like-a-wolf Charlie. But here he mines a subtler vein, letting you glimpse the genuine, self-questioning weariness beneath Bobby’s macho bravado. Far more than Charlie, this Bobby knows he’s playing a part, a perception that could be fatal.
In contrast, Mr. Esparza runs full speed ahead with his ambition-stoked character, tapping the full kinetic force he artfully kept under wraps in recent revivals of “Company” and “The Homecoming.” But while Charlie may be an animal in perpetual fight-or-flight mode, Mr. Esparza finds many shades and textures - of pride, humiliation, anger and resentment - within that primal instinct. And the portrayal of the shifting alpha-male status between Charlie and Bobby should be mandatory viewing for sociologists and, come to think of it, zoologists.
Ms. Moss is best known for playing another ambitious secretary (turned copywriter) in a testosterone-drenched world, on the AMC series “Mad Men.” But she definitely doesn’t just repeat what she does on television. When Madonna played Karen - as woodenly as she was to play most subsequent parts - she got a pass from the critics, who said that her role was too enigmatic to do much with. Ms. Moss proves the lie in that assessment, bringing a naked clarity to her unvarnished, tinny-voiced Karen that makes the play hang together in ways it didn’t before.
I suppose there are a few aspects of “Speed-the-Plow” that date it. That arty end-of-the-world book (titled “The Bridge”) that everyone says would never make a major motion picture sounds like Cormac McCarthy’s end-of-the-world book “The Road,” which has been made into a major motion picture. The word “maverick,” for obvious reasons, gets laughs that it didn’t in 1988. But the idea of a high roller in a money-driven society suddenly sensing a scary void beyond the getting and spending acquires a new relevance in 2008.
Not to get all deep on you, because in the final analysis, “Speed-the-Plow” isn’t much deeper than its characters. But through the simple devices of vibrant, perfectly chosen words delivered vibrantly, this production takes on helium that lifts it and its audience into the ether.
“Oh, man, I can’t come down,” says Charlie, intoxicated by the prospect of humongous success. We know how you feel, Charlie. For as long as you and your nasty workmates are on stage, we’re just as high as you are.
SPEED-THE-PLOW
By David Mamet; directed by Neil Pepe; sets by Scott Pask; costumes by Laura Bauer; lighting by Brian MacDevitt; production stage manager, Matthew Silver; technical supervisor, Larry Morley; fight director, J. David Brimmer; associate producers, Rebecca Gold and Debbie Bisno; company manager, Bruce Klinger; general manager, Richards/Climan Inc. Presented by Jeffrey Richards, Jerry Frankel, Jam Theatricals, JK Productions, Ronald Frankel, Ostar Productions, Peggy Hill, Bat-Barry Productions, Ken Davenport, Scott Delman, Ergo Entertainment, Dede Harris, Alan D. Marks, Patty Ann McKinnon, Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz, Adam Sansiveri and Jamie deRoy/Carl Moellenberg. At the Ethel Barrymore Theater, 243 West 47th Street; (212) 239-6200. Through Feb. 22. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes.
WITH: Jeremy Piven (Bobby Gould), Raúl Esparza (Charlie Fox) and Elisabeth Moss (Karen).
THEATER REVIEW | 'SPEED-THE-PLOW'
Do You Speak Hollywood?
By BEN BRANTLEY
The Barrymore Theater should provide seat belts for as long as Neil Pepe’s revival of David Mamet’s “Speed-the-Plow” is in residence. The production that opened Thursday night - starring the ace team of Jeremy Piven, Raúl Esparza and Elisabeth Moss - pursues its corkscrew course at such velocity that your instinct is to check yourself for whiplash.
When the curtain falls on this short and unsparing study of sharks in the shallows of the movie industry, it’s as if you had stepped off a world-class roller coaster. The ride was over before you knew it, but you’re too dizzy and exhilarated to think you didn’t get your money’s worth.
Is cynicism supposed to be this energizing?
“Speed-the-Plow” has no business feeling so fresh. There was novelty in Mr. Mamet’s acid-etched portrait of greedy, foulmouthed Hollywood players when it opened in 1988. But since then the dirty business of film production has become the stuff of daily business pages, nightly telecasts, snarky Web sites and a slew of self-flagellating movies about movies, from “The Player” (1992) to the current “What Just Happened.” Yet this production is, for me at least, even more vital than the original, which starred an excellent Ron Silver and Joe Mantegna and a shockingly unmemorable Madonna. And the reasons have very little to do with film and everything to do with theater. What makes “Speed-the-Plow” so exciting is its power to define and destroy an entire self-contained world through the tools and weapons of spoken words, expertly wielded by a very live cast.
Boil this 85-minute work down to the sort of single selling sentence that is the lingua franca of its moviemaking characters, and it isn’t much: Two foulmouthed Hollywood executives are all set to pitch a can’t-lose deal to the big boss when an unexpected obstacle blocks their way. This obstacle never pushes its characters out of their insular natural habitat. There’s nothing as extreme as a murder (as in “The Player”) or political crisis (à la “Wag the Dog,” the Hollywood-meets-Washington spoof on which Mr. Mamet worked as a screenwriter).
What there is is talk. And as in his earlier “American Buffalo” (to be revived on Broadway later this season) and “Glengarry Glen Ross,” talk is rich, even when it sounds cheap: a mighty means of measuring and asserting power, of confirming one’s place in the scheme of things.
The slangy, zingy patter of exaggerated insult and tribute swapped by the studio executives Bobby Gould (Mr. Piven) and Charlie Fox (Mr. Esparza) isn’t just air filler; it’s the existential warp and woof of their lives. (Scott Pask’s tasteful, sterile sets for Bobby’s office and house are blank slates; words are what furnish these rooms.) “Speed-the-Plow” is about what happens when the shiny bubble produced by this talk is punctured by someone who doesn’t speak the language.
Bobby is the new head of production at a movie studio; Charlie is his longtime (and lower-tier) associate, who shows up with the deal of a lifetime: the chance to make a prison-themed buddy picture with the box-office king Douggie Brown. Bobby happens to have on his desk an apocalyptic, literary novel by “an Eastern sissy writer,” the antithesis of the kind of movies these men stand for.
The obscenities, sentence shards and machine-gun cadences common to Mr. Mamet’s dialogue are in evidence as Bobby and Charlie celebrate the commercial project and dis the arty one. But unlike the two-bit con men and salesmen of “Buffalo” and “Glengarry,” these small-minded Hollywood big shots, who happily describe themselves as whores, have been endowed with a sense of irony, of self-consciousness.
Both satirical and sentimental about who and what they are, they turn conversation into a ritualistic art. Under Mr. Pepe’s juggernaut direction, Mr. Piven and Mr. Esparza invest that art with the souped-up, self-inflating rhythms of cokeheads (which seemed to be the condition of everyone in Hollywood in the 1980s, even non-users).
Listening to their rapid-fire exchanges is like watching top-seeded tennis opponents locked in an endless rally. And when Karen (Ms. Moss), a temp agency secretary working for Bobby that day, enters the room, you feel the deflation that comes when such volleys end. In speech Karen is a plodder, earnest and dogged. This means that in Bobby’s world she’s exotic, and he starts to listen to her as if she were a siren singing.
Mr. Mamet has provided very little back story for these three characters outside of their professional relationships. Yet as embodied by Mr. Piven, Mr. Esparza and Ms. Moss, they’re not just moral archetypes or linguistic athletes. We know where they’re coming from. Or we do by the end of the show, when we realize just how carefully these performers have set us up for the final payoff.
Mr. Piven has the pivotal role, and he executes it with uncanny grace and intelligence. A three-time Emmy winner as the amoral über-agent on “Entourage,” he would be a natural for the hungry-like-a-wolf Charlie. But here he mines a subtler vein, letting you glimpse the genuine, self-questioning weariness beneath Bobby’s macho bravado. Far more than Charlie, this Bobby knows he’s playing a part, a perception that could be fatal.
In contrast, Mr. Esparza runs full speed ahead with his ambition-stoked character, tapping the full kinetic force he artfully kept under wraps in recent revivals of “Company” and “The Homecoming.” But while Charlie may be an animal in perpetual fight-or-flight mode, Mr. Esparza finds many shades and textures - of pride, humiliation, anger and resentment - within that primal instinct. And the portrayal of the shifting alpha-male status between Charlie and Bobby should be mandatory viewing for sociologists and, come to think of it, zoologists.
Ms. Moss is best known for playing another ambitious secretary (turned copywriter) in a testosterone-drenched world, on the AMC series “Mad Men.” But she definitely doesn’t just repeat what she does on television. When Madonna played Karen - as woodenly as she was to play most subsequent parts - she got a pass from the critics, who said that her role was too enigmatic to do much with. Ms. Moss proves the lie in that assessment, bringing a naked clarity to her unvarnished, tinny-voiced Karen that makes the play hang together in ways it didn’t before.
I suppose there are a few aspects of “Speed-the-Plow” that date it. That arty end-of-the-world book (titled “The Bridge”) that everyone says would never make a major motion picture sounds like Cormac McCarthy’s end-of-the-world book “The Road,” which has been made into a major motion picture. The word “maverick,” for obvious reasons, gets laughs that it didn’t in 1988. But the idea of a high roller in a money-driven society suddenly sensing a scary void beyond the getting and spending acquires a new relevance in 2008.
Not to get all deep on you, because in the final analysis, “Speed-the-Plow” isn’t much deeper than its characters. But through the simple devices of vibrant, perfectly chosen words delivered vibrantly, this production takes on helium that lifts it and its audience into the ether.
“Oh, man, I can’t come down,” says Charlie, intoxicated by the prospect of humongous success. We know how you feel, Charlie. For as long as you and your nasty workmates are on stage, we’re just as high as you are.
SPEED-THE-PLOW
By David Mamet; directed by Neil Pepe; sets by Scott Pask; costumes by Laura Bauer; lighting by Brian MacDevitt; production stage manager, Matthew Silver; technical supervisor, Larry Morley; fight director, J. David Brimmer; associate producers, Rebecca Gold and Debbie Bisno; company manager, Bruce Klinger; general manager, Richards/Climan Inc. Presented by Jeffrey Richards, Jerry Frankel, Jam Theatricals, JK Productions, Ronald Frankel, Ostar Productions, Peggy Hill, Bat-Barry Productions, Ken Davenport, Scott Delman, Ergo Entertainment, Dede Harris, Alan D. Marks, Patty Ann McKinnon, Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz, Adam Sansiveri and Jamie deRoy/Carl Moellenberg. At the Ethel Barrymore Theater, 243 West 47th Street; (212) 239-6200. Through Feb. 22. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes.
WITH: Jeremy Piven (Bobby Gould), Raúl Esparza (Charlie Fox) and Elisabeth Moss (Karen).