Broadway Features and Reviews
Speed-The-Plow: David Mamet's Dilemma
By Molly Kordares, Broadway Magazine
In Speed-the-Plow, one of the two David Mamet plays opening on Broadway this October, movie producer Bobby Gould has 24 hours to make a decision. He can green-light a formulaic action movie, sure to make his studio loads of money, or he can take a chance adapting a novel, sure to present a challenge-but a welcome one. The conundrum seems old and predictable: Follow your heart or follow the buck?
Except that it's not. Speed-the-Plow isn't a play about good versus evil. Instead, says Mamet in a recent article he wrote for the New York Times, it's a play about two evils, or as he puts it, the American Dilemma. "Democracy, we are told, is the worst system, aside from all the other systems; and free enterprise is criminal exploitation of the needy - save when it supplies our cars, homes, wages and food," Mamet writes, sounding more like a stumping politician than a self-promoting playwright. "We'd all like to be good and do well, but we've all got to bring home the bacon."
I'm David Mamet and I support this message? Pretty much. A quick look at his resume shows not only a host of plays, but also books, movies, cartoons, TV shows, and radio dramas. He's even directed two commercials for Ford. If 'high art' is achieved only by remaining above it all, Mamet, it seems, prefers the bottom dollar. "The aim of drama is to put tushies in the seats," he says.
This shouldn't be a problem. Speed-the-Plow's first Broadway production, in 1988, sold more than a million dollars in advance ticket sales. Granted, this probably had more to do with Madonna's role in the play than Mamet's - she played an office temp - but Jeremy Piven as Bobby Gould this time around should help. He will be joined on stage by Raul Esparza (Rocky Horror Show, Company) and Elisabeth Moss (AMC's Mad Men). Piven assures us that Speed-the-Plow hasn't lost anything over the past 20 years. "It's actually more true today than when he wrote it," he told Broadway Magazine at a recent press event. "It's an incredibly timely piece."
For Mamet, the question is simple: "What is the difference between Work and Art, and how is one to draw the line?" Just don't expect the answer to be so clear. "When the play is over," warns Esparza, "the audience is still debating and fighting and shouting opinions about what they just saw." But as long as they aren't asking for a refund, Mamet's job is done.
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