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Review
Book Description
Revived on Broadway in 2008, the original production starred Joe Mantegna, Ron Silver and Madonna in this hilarious satire of Hollywood, a culture as corrupt as the society it claims to reflect. Charlie Fox has a terrific vehicle for a currently hot client. Bringing the script to his friend Bobby Gould, the newly appointed Head of Production at a major studio, both see the work as their ticket to the Big Time. The star wants to do it; as they prepare their pitch to the studio boss, Bobby wagers Charlie that he can seduce the temp/secretary, Karen. As a ruse, he gives her a novel by "some Eastern sissy" writer that needs a courtesy read before being dismissed out of hand. Karen slyly determines the novel, not the movie-star script, should be the company's next film. She sleeps with Bobby who is so smitten with Karen and her ideals that he pleads with Charlie to drop the star project and and pitch the "Eastern sissy" writer's book.
"Hilarious and chilling ."- The New York Times
"Mamet's clearest, wittiest play." - The New York Daily News
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Gould's office. Morning. Boxes and painting materials all around. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of my favourites,
By
This review is from: Speed-The-Plow (Paperback)
Every time I read this play, I find myself more and more excited to stage it. We are producing a production of this play here in Vancouver November 3rd-14th at the Havana Theatre, and this play is a great read, but even better when it's played. This play is quick witted, hard hitting, yields one of the best final scenes in contemporary theatre in my opinion. Mamet fan or not, this play is as topical today as it was a decade ago when it was written.
4.0 out of 5 stars
The best of Mamet (along with Glen Garry),
By JackOfMostTrades "Jack" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Speed-The-Plow (Paperback)
This is probably Mamet's best work, in my opinion, since he focuses on truthful characters without the rather contrived repartee of many of his other plays in which he seems to attempt to develop some metrical dramturgical quirkiness to provide the viewer/reader with a sense of originality. I find Mamet's screenplays usually better than his plays, try The Spanish Prisoner for example. But in Speed the Plow, he provides us with fully fleshed characters who speak like real people (with the necessary artistic license and not so hung up about verbal pyrotechnics. By the way, his style is obviously influenced by studies with Sandy Meisner from the Neighborhood Playhouse. Read the book in the the year of the life of Sandy Meisner "Meisner on Acting" and you'll see the acting exercises that influenced Mamet's writings.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Intoxicating prose, uncertain structure,
By
This review is from: Speed-The-Plow (Paperback)
Mamet gives us blinding pace in this spare play, a mere 82 pages in print. It can easily be read in an hour. The rapid-fire exchanges between characters put the reader in the position of a rubber-necked viewer at a tennis match between serve-and-volley powerhouses. If merely keeping the reader/viewer engaged is the goal of good theater, Mamet succeeds, in spades. But truly great theater resonates after the reader has laid the play aside or exited the playhouse. In this regard, "Speed-the-Plow," superior work though it may be, falls just a bit short for me, although I confess I have not seen it performed on stage, and would jump at the chance to do so. In any event, as a piece of reading, the play is too slight in its ideas for me to classify it as top-notch. The play is built on a simple idea. Two movie execs, Charlie Fox and Bobby Gould, meet in Gould's office. Fox has brought Gould, his superior, a sure-fire hit, which from all we can gather will be a typical piece of Hollywood pap sure to please the masses. Fox has sold the script idea to a big-time Hollywood performer who has given them a short-time to put the deal together. Enter Karen, Gould's temporary office assistant. Gould has been giving an obtuse, esoteric novel a "courtesy read," and as a ploy to seduce her, Gould asks Karen to read the novel and give him a report on it. Fox offers Gould a friendly bet that he won't succeed with Karen. Somehow -- and this is a key weakness in the play -- Karen manages in the second act to convince the hard-boiled Gould to produce the film of the novel, at the expense of Fox's project. When Fox learns of this, the following day, he is of course outraged and manages in the end to convince Gould that the seemingly idealistic Karen is in fact no different than either of them and has used Gould sexually in return for the promise to produce the "art" film. Much of the play's power derives from Mamet's undeniable gift with language. Fox and Gould sound absolutely real as Hollywood types: borderline slimeball, jaded, absolutely devoid of idealism, but very funny, precisely because of all these things. Language, however, is only one element of successful theater. The motivations of Karen are obscure, but more importantly one is hard-pressed to believe that Gould, who spends much of the play developing in different ways the idea that he's not paid to produce art, would even momentarily be convinced to dump a sure box office smash and endure the humiliation that Fox heaps on him. All I could think of was, That Karen must have been some dame. Trouble is, I didn't get enough of her through Mamet's development to buy that. I'm a big Mamet fan, and even work that is not his best is for me worth reading. "Speed-the-Plow" was, simply put, intoxicating the first time I read it because of its rhythmic intensity. Even if its intoxication fades a bit in the aftermath of reading, enough of a glow lingers to make the time spent worthwhile.
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