THE THEATER MIRROR, New England's LIVE Theater Guide
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note: entire contents copyright 2009 by Beverly Creasey
New Rep has done the impossible. I’ve been converted. They’re currently giving David Mamet the production of his dreams so I’m putting you on notice. You only have until November 7th to see New Rep’s pause-perfect SPEED-THE-PLOW. I reaped nothing from my three previous encounters with the PLOW. I didn’t like the play. I didn’t get the play. Now I get it, thanks to director Robert Walsh, three crackerjack performers and the perfect storm of set, sound, light and costume.
Mamet’s comedy of Hollywood bad manners, it turns out, is the funniest play I’ve seen all year. Robert Pemberton plays the quintessential, foul mouthed movie mogul more concerned with the bottom line than artistic merit ---until circumstances give him the chance to make a meaningful contribution. Mamet’s nifty little moral dilemma is happily beset by bad behavior on all fronts, in the person of a co-conspirator and the temptation of a beautiful woman. Watching Pemberton as Bobby Gould drool over his prospects is simply delightful. (You may remember a previous incarnation when Mamet dispatched Gould to Hell but that’s another play for another day.)
Gabriel Kuttner is hilarious as Gould’s resentful subordinate and Aimee Doherty is just sweet enough to keep us guessing about her stake in the game. (I think she has the pivotal role. In all the previous PLOWS I’ve seen, not one of those actresses had that innocence.) And costume designer Charles Schoonmaker puts Doherty into the loveliest, proper little dress to sell that naïveté. Jeff Adelberg lights up Eric Levenson’s steel and glass high-rise so smartly, it has to be L.A. and J. Hagenbuckle’s cheeky original music says Hollywood from the get-go. It’s brash. It’s loud and it’s a hoot.
So pick up the phone and speed-the-dial to New Repertory Theatre’s box office. You don’t want to miss this one.