Also this issue:

There's No Place Like Home
After two years in New Hope, a Tin Man finds the heart of the gallery scene in Philly.
-Juliet Fletcher

Ashes to Ashes
-Susan Hagen

Artsbeat
-Debra Auspitz

The Magic Fire
-Steve Cohen

The Golden Dreydl
-Mary Armstrong

Here's to the Ladies
-David Anthony Fox

Hometown Phavorites
-Deni Kasrel

Good Boy Network
-David Anthony Fox

November 27-December 3, 2002

theater

Full Speed Ahead

by Toby Zinman

David Mamet’s indictment of Hollywood -- as well as his seduction by it and his success in it -- may be both more extensive and more ornate than any other American playwright’s. He has both written and directed successful films (The Verdict, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Untouchables, House of Games, We’re No Angels, Things Change, Hoffa, Homicide, Wag the Dog, The Spanish Prisoner, Heist), as well as filmed versions of various plays of his, including the less-than-successful translations from stage to screen of Glengarry Glen Ross and Oleanna.

In 1986, two years before Speed-the-Plow, Mamet wrote, "Now we Americans have always considered Hollywood, at best, a sinkhole of depraved venality. And, of course, it is. It is not a Protective Monastery of Aesthetic Truth. It is a place where everything is incredibly expensive."

Bobby Gould (Paul Nolan) and Charlie Fox (Joe Guzman) are two Hollywood producers who are as venal as they come. They are about to make a killing with a super-schlocky buddy movie with a big star. Speed-the-Plow is a funny, nasty buddy play with an ending that has you rooting for all the wrong people.

The play's odd title comes from an English proverb dating from the 15th century. "God speed the plough" did not mean, "God hasten the plough," but "God prosper the plough" -- that is, may your work go well and profitably. Bobby Gould's plough has surely been sped; as he tells his temporary secretary, "Hey, I prayed to be pure.... I said God give me the job as head of production. Give me a platform to be Œgood,' and I'll be good. They gave me the job, I'm here one day and look at me: a Big Fat Whore."

The plot revolves around a temp secretary who tries to get ahead by promoting an "art film" full of doom and gloom and New-Agey rubbish. Karen (Amy Gorbey) challenges the basic premise of the industry with her question, "Why should it all be garbage?" and Charlie Fox replies, "Why should nickels be bigger than dimes? That's the way it is."

There is lots of this sort of nifty Mamet language, although the actors mercifully resist robotic Mamet-speak and make their characters sound human. (If anything, under Dugald MacArthur's direction there is too little stylization, too little vicious edge, making the play less amusing than it should be.) All three actors navigate the ambiguities of their characters admirably, shifting moods with subtlety and never forecasting the play's indictment of their depraved and self-deluded world.