Speed the Plow, a play by David Mamet, seen Saturday, October 27, 2018 at Road Less Traveled Productions theater. Directed by Scott Behrend.
I have a problem with this play. I have no problem with the production itself. Matt Witten and Kevin Kennedy are very good as Bobby Gould and Charlie Fox, two full-of-themselves Hollywood producers who've been promoted. They play the profanity-crammed buddy dialog pretty well. Mamet does the profanity quite realistically. Having worked in corporations most of my career, I've heard men talk this way many times (mostly salesmen, and sometimes women), though never quite this non-stop. Laura Barriere is also good as the temporary secretary with schemes of her own. Nice stage set. The whole production moved with a snappy verve, as a Mamet play should.
My problem is with the play itself. There are two holes in the story for me.
1. The courtesy read book (whatever it's titled) is so bad, it's hard to imagine any producer being interested in it as a movie. Yes, I understand that it's Mamet's intention that the book (as presented through the segments read aloud by Karen and Bobby) is supposed to be comically ridiculous. But the book is too ridiculous. Bobby decides to promote the book as a movie thanks to being won over by Karen (who wins him over by having sex with him). Bobby Gould, and men like him, can have all the sex they want with the Karens of the world. A night of sex with Karen is not enough to make anyone like Bobby Gould dump his longtime ally and friend Charlie and even temporarily promote this absurd movie idea. To me, it simply doesn't make sense.
2. Then there's Karen. Why would Karen promote this book? What's in it for her? That's never clear. We are made to believe that Karen is not as innocent as she presents
herself at the beginning. Fine. She turns out to be ambitious. Okay. She wants to be in a movie. Great. But
she could have more easily wormed her way into the movie that Charlie was promoting with that mega-star director as this stupid. And what is it about Karen that gives her so much power over Bobby? That's never clear either.
Together, these two problems make this otherwise taut, well-shaped play puzzling and nonsensical. That's my problem.
Postscript
From a Facebook post, I replied to a friend:
"...yes, as I was listening to the read-aloud excerpts of the courtesy-read
book, I had the feeling that in the 70s or 80s, such a book may not
have seemed quite so ridiculous to many in the audience. And perhaps
Karen might have seemed more plausible as a sort of peace-love crusader.
In that sense, the play is kind of 'dated'."
