It takes a thespian farmer to 'Speed the Plow'

Two men and one woman struggle to find meaning in soulless Hollywood. Add a little violence, a little sex, and a dumptruck full of classic David Mamet trash talk, and you've got yourself a show that'll put butts in the seats. Thankfully, Speed the Plow is much more than this, and the production playing in Trumbull's Nick Chapel is far more than a simple satire.

COURTESY ARTCHIVE.COM David Hockney's 'Bigger Splash' is the poster for Jeremy Strong's, TC '01, production of Mamet's 'Speed The Plow'.

The whole tone of the play is subtle and delicate, but retains the punch and clarity America has come to expect from master playwright Mamet. However, as anyone with any experience on the stage can tell you, it takes far, far more than a great text to make a great show. For a play to realize whatever value lies in its script, a whole range of different people presented with imposing tasks have to work very hard. Fortunately, in a whole range of areas, the running production, directed by Jeremy Strong, TC '01, definitely delivers.

Speed the Plow places great demands on its three actors. Jenny Wilson, DC '01, Sturgis Adams, a student of Sarah Lawrence College, and Strong meet the challenge head-on with an impressive combination of creativity and skill. The three characters are evocatively and clearly formed, which makes the play easy to watch, and the relationships among them are genuine and well-formed. This latter point is of the utmost importance. Speed the Plow is about more than Hollywood; rather, it is about the very specific relationships among these three people, who are left to figure out their conflicts and desires without any sort of outside aid. It would have been easy for these relationships to collapse into cliché, but the cast diligently imbues the characters with energy and complexity every step of the way. This is particularly impressive considering the cast directed itself with only limited collaborative work on the part of Karron Graves, DRA '03.

Adams plays Bobby Gould, a powerful Hollywood executive with a shallow, slimy side. Adams does the part a great service by realistically portraying this oily, fast-talking aspect of Gould as an affectation, thereby leaving the character open to the possibilities of growth and change. By layering his character with realistic motivations and subtexts, Adams succeeds in bringing Bobby Gould to life, particularly with regard to his relationships with the other characters.

Wilson plays Karen, an idealistic secretary and a fresh voice in the hollow cacaphony of Hollywood yes-men. Playing a role that originated with the Material Girl herself (yes, Madonna was the first actress to play Karen back in 1988), Wilson breathes both a lust for life and an iconoclastic edge into a part that shakes the very foundations of the play's world. Whenever Wilson is left to speak alone, she seizes the moral and thematic direction of the play, delivering enlightened lines with passion and faith, a rare commodity in Hollywood as it is depicted in Speed.

The only reason Karen does not overpower the play before it has begun is the character of Charles Fox, played with defiant intensity by Strong. This provocative character gets the most interesting blocking in the show and the lion's share of that wonderful Mamet trash talk. Strong takes full advantage of both, bringing to Fox and to the play as a whole a sense of urgency and practical necessity that would otherwise be buried in indulgent diatribes. When the script and direction call for it, he alternately dominates the scene and shrinks to subservience with equal aplomb—although it is admittedly far more fun to watch Strong cut loose with a railing assault of obscenities than to see him brownnose.

Theater

Speed the Plow Directed by Jeremy Strong Produced by Elizabeth Newman Fri., Oct. 20, 7, 10 p.m.; Sat., Oct. 21, 7, 10 p.m. Nick Chapel

The sets, designed by Joe McGuire, CC '03, take full advantage of every available inch of Nick Chapel, against all odds creating a sense of indoor, open spaces reminiscent of the Golden Age of Hollywood. This also has the practical and artistic advantage of providing large distances for the actors to play with, which strengthens a number of the play's themes. The furniture is realistic without being cluttered or bulky, and the color of the walls, far too bright to be tasteful, pokes further fun at tinseltown's superficiality and decadence.

The crowning glory of Speed the Plow is that it has the remarkable distinction of having the most joyful and exciting scene changes in the history of theater. In the tradition of a Hollywood that is simultaneously phony and deceptively appealing, the onstage furniture is rearranged to the pumping synth-rock of the Top Gun soundtrack. Perhaps David Mamet would not have agreed with that choice, but David Mamet is only one man, and, as this production proves, teamwork and trust are the keys to great theater.

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