Theatre Review: Speed-the-Plow

For those of you who have not had a chance to take in the often-hysterical, usually profane, but always interesting plays of Chicago’s David Mamet, I would urge you to see a production of Glengarry Glen Ross (whether on stage or on film). Soulpepper, this country’s finest theatre company, knew enough to put on a superb Glengarry several seasons ago.

In mid-July (and running until September 22), Soulpepper took on one of Mamet’s most crackling, vulgar, but thought-provoking second-tier creations: the oddly-named Speed-the-Plow (Google the name for its several, weird origins), directed beautifully by David Storch (one of Soulpepper’s better actors) and starring the very fine trio of Ari Cohen, Jordan Pettle and Sarah Wilson.

It’s a slight, surprisingly compact play, running roughly 90 minutes in three abrupt, mostly brilliant acts — scenes, really — that run together without intermissions (which the show sometimes uses in its many productions).

Satire is one of the highest forms of theatrical art, but some topics are more “worthy” of satire than others, and some, perhaps, are too easy as targets. This may be the weakest aspect of Mamet’s entertaining but hardly shocking Speed-the-Plow: it is hard to imagine that any subject is as ripe and more open to satiric mockery than Hollywood, with its purported longing for “art” but easy tendency to sell out for the Big Buck.

Poking fun at the shallow, hypocritical, make-money-or-die world of American movies is irresistible, but hardly original or surprising. In Speed-the-Plow, a newly-advanced movie producer Bobby Gould (no relation, I assure you; and he is played brilliantly by Cohen), is asked to read an end-of-the-world script, but it’s clear that he is far more eager to produce a vulgar, ultra-violent, probably racist prison script brought to him by a former acolyte, now a producer himself, Charlie Fox (Pettle, also at the top of his game).

Both men are ecstatic at the idea of producing something that they know will be garbage, but should make them both outrageously wealthy. The plot thickens as a temporary assistant, the beautiful and scheming Karen (played perfectly by the voluptuous Wilson), offers to “courtesy read” the idiotic but “serious” apocalypse script, when it’s clear that Bobby Gould is after her body, not her thoughts.

I won’t be a spoiler here, other than to say that this short but rat-a-tat-tat play has more curves in it than Karen, and is often as uproarious as it is cynical angry, dirty and smart-alecky. Am I glad I (finally) saw this nearly quarter-century-old play? Of course. Mamet, even so-so Mamet, is better than the majority of other major dramatists at their best.

Is Soulpepper presenting a fine production? When does it not? But mocking the pretensions of Hollywood producers is like shooting fish in a barrel.

See this solid production. But for Mamet at his best, track down Glengarry Glen Ross, a play about disgusting, desperate men pushing rotten real estate properties on the public. It is explosive and devastating.

Speed-the-Plow, Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 416-866-8666. Runs until Sept. 22

Allan Gould is Post City Magazines’ theatre critic. He has a Ph.D. in English and theatre from York University and has written over 40 books. His writing has appeared in Toronto Life, Chatelaine, en Route, Canadian Business, Good Times and the Financial Post. He is married, with two children. Aside from his family, his major passions are theatre and film, because they enrich life with pleasure and meaning.

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